A Letter to Myself as a Pregnant Teen

Dear Teenage Me,

You have a feeling deep in your soul, but you try your best to dismiss it.  It can't be what you think it is...you can't be.  Your 14th birthday is a few more weeks away!  You have your whole life ahead of you.  You are just a kid yourself!  It will be ok cause he pulled out...right?  You only had sex a handful of times...this can't really be happening, can it?  Has it been four or five weeks since your last period?  You can't remember for sure.  

Your first confession will be to your best friend, who doesn't know what to say.  She is more focused on meeting up with her boyfriend in the hallway between classes.  You see, her parents are home to supervise her, so she only sees her boyfriend at school.  You, on the other hand, live with your grandma and betrayed her trust by having your boyfriend over while she was at work.  You didn't see what the big deal was anyways.  

The next person you tell is your 17-year-old boyfriend.  You convince yourself that he will have words of wisdom and a way to make this a little less scary.  You have only been together for a couple months, but you "love" him, despite knowing so little about him.  You finally muster the courage to tell him your fears, but his response is not like any of the scenarios you played out in your head.  He will look deep into your eyes as he lays his hand across your still small belly and say, "I don't want you to have it."  He will follow with a list of (valid) reasons as to why neither of you are ready to be parents.  You feel like you've been punched in the gut.  Now what?

Maybe your school counselor will be able to help.  That is her job, right?  You sit in her office, pouring out your soul about your missed period and selfish boyfriend.  You can clearly see the look of horror across her face.  She must have never imagined having this conversation with an 8th grade student.  Her advice will be to pray for your period to start, even if that means you miscarry (seriously, who says that to an already scared child?), and that if you choose to keep the baby, neither of you will ever amount to anything in life.  You leave knowing you will never confide in her again, leaving you feeling even more alone in all of this.  

You finally break down and tell your grandma.  You both sit in shock at a local Christian-based pregnancy resource center as your fears are confirmed.  You are given your options and a stack of pamphlets with local resources and go home to process it all  The news confirming the rumors will spread through the middle school like wildfire.  As someone who was previously unknown and mostly ignored, you will now be talked about by the entire school, students and staff alike...and they will all stare and whisper when you walk by.  

You will eventually get used it...kinda.  It will happen at the grocery store, too, once you are showing.  You are now an abomination to the world.  The middle school principal will even have a meeting with your grandma to recommend you finish the school year as as home-bound student as to not encourage the other students to get pregnant....like anyone would be jealous of that kind of attention.  (If anything, it will open the eyes of your classmates to the reality that if you could get pregnant, so could they.)  Thankfully, your grandma will tell the principal to get bent and offer to call her attorney.  

Just when you start to thinks things can't get any worse, your 14th birthday rolls around.  Your boyfriend hands you a note as he kisses your forehead and heads to school.  You open it to find that he is breaking up with you and moving to his dad's house over an hour away.   You will struggle to get over him and hold out hope that he will return to help raise the child you created together.  

That fantasy will be destroyed when you call him a month before the due date and he demands a paternity test.  He will confess that he was unfaithful and assumed you knew and were cheating as well. You will be devastated. Being that you are so young, you will think he is your whole world.  (This is why teenagers are not emotionally ready for relationships.)  He is not the only one who will bail on you either!  You know the two uncles who you have always been so close to?  They will not take the news well, and ultimately, will end up completely turning their backs on you over the next couple of years.  

Hold on, though, we are not done yet!  Wait until your church congregation finds out!  The people who are supposed to love you and lift you up in your time of need gossip about you and avoid you, as they don't want to be seen as condoning your sin.  They will encourage you to choose adoption and then will be outraged and appalled when you choose to keep your child.  Later, when your child is 6 months old, they will all but outright ask you to leave the church.  It doesn't matter that you are no longer having sex or that the Bible tells them not to judge.   I would like to tell you not to take it personally, but it will destroy your relationship with God for far too many years to come.  

When the day comes to bring your daughter into the world, be ready for your last and most distressing battle as a pregnant teen. You will endure 23 hours of labor, followed by an emergency c-section.  The maternity ward staff, who are typically joyful and sweet, will be very rough with you and blatantly rude.  I have never figured out if this is to punish you in some way, or maybe they were disgusted that you chose to keep your baby when they knew so many who wanted children, but couldn't.  

Surgery will be scary, since the nurses will not tell you what is going on like they would have for any other new mother.  You will wake up to find out you have a beautiful daughter and taken to your room to sleep.  When you wake up the next morning, excited to meet your daughter, the nurses will ignore your request to bring her to your room.  A total of 7 hours will pass and you will get quite panicked.  You will come to find out later that the nurses on duty wrongly assumed you were giving your daughter up for adoption due to your age and didn't think it was healthy for you to see her.  (Looking back...I feel that should have been a law suit, but what did I know then?)

You probably feel pretty discouraged and beat down right now, huh?  Yeah, I know.  I can still feel it like it was yesterday.  The Lord has blessed/cursed us with a mind that is always in motion, always thinking, always remembering.  But...I am writing this to give you HOPE!  There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel!  There is a happy ending to your ordeal as a pregnant teen.  Your daughter grows up to be a beautiful young woman, so smart and funny!   She loves people, just like you, and despite all the dysfunction she will grow up in, she will finish high school and wait until she is 21 to have her first child.  You will be a grandma at the age of 36, the same age you made your mom a grandma.  

You will get a 2 year college degree and have four more children.  Once you are older and grow in your faith, you will understand that God has already forgiven you.  Unfortunately, it will take 15-some years to forgive yourself and get right with God again.  But,. it will come, so try to not lose hope.  Hang in there.  You will be better for it in the end.  And try to love yourself a little more.  You are not nearly as worthless as others make you feel. 

"For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory.  All glory to him forever. Amen." Romans 11:36 NLT