My Story

It’s all about me 😉

Facts:

Name: Cath

Age: 18 *gasp*

Location: UK with my parents.

Current status: Single

Occupation: Student a University

Children: Expecting my first on the 28/1/11

My Story:

I suppose the question that i get asked most is “aren’t you a little young to be having a baby?” and the truth is yes, yes i am (and it doesn’t help that i look even younger than my actual age…) But everyone is different, and everyone conceives at different stages in their lives, i just happen to be having my first child in my teens.

I suppose if you’d have asked me this time last year my thoughts on teenage pregnancy i would have given you a great big rant about how they are throwing their lives away, they’re too immature, not prepared… pretty much everything i was told when it came to light i was first pregnant. Has being in this situation changed my views? Yeah, it has… in a way.

I found out i was pregnant at 30 weeks. Now, you’re probably wondering how the hell i didn’t notice before then, but in all honesty, i truly didn’t. I have never had a regular period, in fact, the last one i had was in 2009 in October, and i had been told by nurses i’d seen that the chances of me conceiving naturally without IVF etc were about 1 in a million. In my eyes, getting pregnant just wasn’t possible.

I had been with my boyfriend for a year, and during that year i had not been using any contraception, because hey, as far as i was concerned, i couldn’t get pregnant. There’s the mistake i made right there, being so ignorant. Of course, when i broke up with my ex, i didn’t sleep with anyone else, so when during my A level exams i began throwing up i believed it couldn’t possibly be morning sickness – though it definitely crossed my mind.

My friends urged me to take a test, but at about £6 i wasn’t prepared to waste my money on something which would tell me what i believed i already knew. I wasn’t pregnant. So i carried on with my life as normal, throwing up as smells i normally could handle like eggs and cleaning fluids, convinced i merely had a stomach virus.

Of course, two weeks later my friends were practically BEGGING me to take a test, so i caved, took one and it came out negative. Now, surely if i was pregnant (in my eyes) i would have seen the pretty little blue +, but of course, i did not, which i later found out was probably because i took it wrong. Always take two for good measure!

Now that i had my friends convinced i was not pregnant, i moved on with my life and eventually the throwing up stopped. I wet on holiday with my friends to Turkey, enjoyed 14 days of late nights and partying, and of course got on the dreaded plane (which i hear you can’t do when pregnant…)

I passed my exams and went off to Uni to live in accommodation, where i enjoyed a life of partying and late nights.  Of course, during trips home i would often complain that i was getting fat, something which i could never understand since i was definitely eating less at uni (us students cant afford takeaways!), but the weight gain was put down to drinking.

I then started a ‘part time job’, which really wasn’t very part time since they had me working dog hours of 40 a week as well as trying to attend uni and complete my work. At the end of each night i’d return to my room and chat to my dad about my day and complain about how swollen my feet would get and how tired i always felt. Turns out swollen feet is a sign of pregnancy… who knew? 😛 I also felt movements in my belly which i complained was just gas moving and would whine about how it keeps me awake.

Then was when i found out. At my Accommodation we didn’t have a mirror in the bathroom. When i’d get out the shower, i’d immediately get dressed in there, and of course i didn’t have a floor length one in my room. At home, however, we do have a large mirror in the bathroom, and coming home one day after two weeks of working every weekend i noticed strange marks on the lower part of my belly close to the pubis bone.

Inspecting the marks in the mirror, i turned this way and that and noticed just how big my belly had got. Panicking, i rushed to my stepmum and asked her what the marks were, and also commented on how my belly looked swollen, rather that ‘fat’. She asked me to lay on the bed where she poked at my belly to see why is was so swollen (she’s a trained nurse). As she pokes about, she sudden touches something in my stomach, which moves when she prods it. Shocked, we both stare at each other, me thinking i had a tumour (i was seriously in denial…) and her instantly having a feeling i was pregnant.

She rushed me to the doctors (we told my dad we had nipped out for ‘ladies things’… he didn’t want to know anymore after that 😛 ) and asked to see somebody about having a pregnancy test. I was taken into a room with a nurse and she asked me to pee on this stick and then we waited, me sat there thinking this was all a HUGE waste of time, surely i should be seeing a doctor about a possible tumor, and my stepmum there discussing the symptoms i had (which in my head i had talked into being just normal things, virus, gas etc).

Then of course, the test showed positive, as did the other i was asked to take. That’s when i went into shock. I sat there, not talking, staring into space thinking back to all the signs i had that had shown i had been pregnant, and all that time i had been so ignorant. Suddenly they all seemed so obvious and i felt like the biggest idiot. Then i cried. What would my dad think of me?! I was convinced he would kick me out, or disown me and was scared to even face him.

When we got home he was suspicious. For a start, where was the bags with the ‘ladies things’, and why was we gone so long? I simply rushed upstairs, packed my bags and told him i was heading back to uni a bit early because i was meeting up with my best friend Tanya, and she was coming back with me for a girls weekend. (A lie, but not completely. She *was* coming back with me but only to support me since i was still pretty shocked). My dad (bless him) slipped me an extra £20 and told me to have fun and then drove me to the train station to meet me friends. My guilt meter at this point was at about 100000.

Back at Uni me and my friend made a list of pros and cons of keeping the baby, though we actually had more pros if i’m honest. We ordered a take away and ended up just discussing what it would be like to keep the baby, all the while with me scared to death because my stepmum had promised to tell my dad when i had gone. He texted me later that night telling me that he wasn’t mad, he was disappointed (which is always worse…) but he would stick by me, whatever i wanted.

When i finally next saw him, we sat down and discussed what we should do. At this point i was pretty sure in my mind i was only like 12 weeks pregnant (don’t ask how i worked that out since i hadn’t been with my boyfriend for 6 months, i was just so sure…) and so we decided it would be best to go see about a possible abortion. Though i wasn’t entirely sure i wanted this, i agreed to go discuss it and we went to discuss the option with a specialist, who then scanned me to see how far along i was.

Then came shock numero 2. She told me that although her scanner wasn’t good enough to see the exact age of the fetus, i was definitely too far gone to get an abortion. So the only option i had now was to definitely go through with it. At my first official pregnancy scan i was confirmed to be around 30 weeks pregnant (give or take 2 weeks). Biig shocker, i had gone 30 weeks without even noticing i was pregnant?! I definitely felt like an idiot.

Of course, then the issue of my drinking came up, as i had been drinking heavily on holiday where i would have been in my first trimester, and been drinking quite a bit at uni during what would have been my second, though i later stopped the drinking as i was working too many hours to find time to go out. But i had missed all the important primary antenatal care i should have received and hadn’t exactly been eating all that good.

Scans showed, however, that my baby was in fact healthy and i can only prey that it’s true when i do have him, as i know it will be all my fault if he’s not. If you haven’t worked out already, he was confirmed to be a baby boy, due 28/1/11 and i decided to call him Alfie 🙂

I have moved in back home with my parents where i wait now to go into labour. My dad and stepmum have been really great, buying me all the baby clothes, nappies and furniture i’ll need. I will always be so greatful, especially since my dad is offering to take care of Alfie during the hours i will be at Uni as he doesn’t work and my stepmum has been baby clothes buying mad! Alfie will never want for anything, i can tell you that! I will be working hard to get a good Uni degree to support him in the future 🙂

I can only hope he has a safe delivery and is healthy ❤