Teenage parenthood - The turning points in life

 Teenage parenthood - The turning points in life

Do you remember those pick a path books? My life often feels like one of those books. Where I was heading down a certain path but then something happens and before I know it I'm on a completely different path! Becoming a mum at 15 felt like one of those moments.

It was one of the many turning points in my life.

 I grew up in an alternative family and community in a place called Dondingalong. My parents had 100 acres of land and we lived in a tent and shed for a long time, while my dad built a house from trees on the property. Their goal was to live a self sustaining life on the land .. and somewhere in there they came up with a grand idea to turn their 4 kids into a band. Well at 14 rebellious me was so not going to be apart of helping create that dream. Which I have to admit I've regretted over the years.. as being a musician now looks so cool!

 However back then it did not look cool at all. While my brothers got busy practicing their instruments and creating bands I just wondered what on earth I was doing in this bizzare family and hoped that my real parents would find me soon. As surely I was adopted and this could not really be the truth of where I belonged!

To survive living with this family (who I now love very much 😉) required me to spend alot of time reading books! Books became a haven, as there I could hide, be safe and be free in other people's stories. I would dream about the day I would live in a normal house, with a normal family, doing normal things. I wanted to create my own story and dreams for my life.

At 14 my search to find love in boys increased  (yes, yes if I only I knew then this was always gaurenteed to fail!). Somewhere in me thought freedom and belonging would happen here. It seemed like a good, easy option to access being loved and to belong somewhere.

Everyone else at school looked so cool. They were great dancers, musicians, actors, they were beautiful, skinny and smart. They did performances and plays! I didn't feel like any of that. I would watch all the funky kids at school and feel like that would never be me.  So surely I could be good at boys, sex, drinking and taking drugs. Yes that I could definitely master!

And I was kind of good at it. I always had a boyfriend or three and there was always access to alcohol and drugs. I can gaurentee you though not many of my early sexual experiences were very loving. They were more like drunken degrading nights on a beach or someone's backyard, where I would wake up the next day not remembering alot and quite often be ignored by this guy!

Eventually my dream guy arrived though. I found the worst person I could find (tick) my parents would hate him (tick) he always had an ongoing supply of drugs (tick) he was older than me (tick) and he had already left school (tick). Wagging school became my new hobbie and spending days at the river with him stoned. I'd lie to my parents about where I was going on weekends, go camping with him, score drugs and have sex. It was a very self destructive but addictive path.

 Looking back I wonder what on earth I needed as that young girl. What could have lead me to a different path at this time. This relationship had become my main focus and this decision had long term consequences. My parents did everything they knew how to stop it. But the more they tried the more determination was ignited. It was dangerous and thrilling. My life felt pretty shit and rebelious me didn't care about alot.. especially not myself.

My parents eventually found out sex was a part of my life (super mad!) and my dad took me to the doctor to get the pill (ahhh humiliating!) The doctor gave me the pill and we waited for my period to come so I could start taking it.  Weeks went by waiting for that period...it never came.

The idea of being pregnant terrified me but I was always so certain that would never happen to me. Contraception wasn't a priority for me, as invincibility had become my very close friend and convinced me risks were worth taking! But...

I brought a pregnancy test from the chemist with my mum after school one day. We drove back to our house,  it was just my mum and I at home. I remember walking into the toilet, in our beautiful timber house my dad had built, with the pregnancy test packet, pee-ing on that stick and slowly watching that positive cross come up. I stared at it for a very long time. Fuck.

My mum was waiting for me in the kitchen and I showed her the test. We starred at eachother across the table (where not that long ago time- tables were the challenge!) And we cried and cried.

Eventually I rang my boyfriend to let him know. We quickly started talking about how we would build sandcastles at the beach with our baby and how we could do this. We created stories in our head of how this would all be ok  (Those sandcastle fantasies on the beach were so far from the reality that unfolded in my relationship with him).

At 15 with a positive pregnancy test in hand, huge adult decisions were now required.  I needed to make decisions that would effect the rest of my life. With no idea what I wanted to do with my life, who I was or what I loved, I had to face this. Whilst everyone at school was deciding which subjects to pick for year 11/12...  I was now deciding did I want to be a mum?

My life soon became flooded with family and friends passionate opinions about what I should do. Devastation hit and alot of peoples fears were stirred up. A decision needed to be made pretty quickly about whether to have an abortion or not. I retreated from all the chaos to the safety of my room to think a lot. The idea of an abortion was so overwhelming. It felt more overwhelming than having a baby.

After alot of thinking I walked into my parents room one night to tell them I was keeping the baby. I was so scared. I told them I wanted to try and that I would adopt the baby out if it got too hard. They agreed to help me as much as they could and supported my decision. However my mum was already starting to become unwell with Huntingtons Disease . So this support was always going to be limited. However determination soon kicked in that I could do this and my life quickly had a new focus.

Over the coming months my life became about attending doctors appointment and anti natal groups with women twice my age.. often alone...as my boyfriends lifestyle did not change so much.  He continued on his self destructive path as I prepared for my life of motherhood. I will never forget being 15 and looking at the women with their husbands in those classes..and thinking there is something REALLY wrong with me. But smart me was going to shake that off, keep attending and learn as much as I bloody could!

Honestly, at this stage in my life there was any part of me that was ready to become a mum. I had no real sense of my own identity, what I loved or who I was was. But I did know this baby needed love and I was going to do everything I could to take care of it. Which meant leaving my self destructive life behind. Being pregnant to someone who had serious drug addictions and mental illness was going to be very hard territory to navigate. But I would weave my way through it.

At school I told the principle that continuing school after year 10 wasn't possible due to becoming a mum. Shame became a huge part of my experience of telling people. Reactions were strong and feeling like a disappointment was big. I often felt like yelling at adults that this was never my dream, but I'm not sure I ever really had a dream, or that anyone had ever spoken to me about my dreams. But this was now my reality, so help me.

I improved my attendance at school, as getting that year 10 certificate now felt so important to my babies future. I finished school seven months pregnant, unable to fit any school uniforms and very glad to be getting out of that system and leaving behind the shame and exposure. Being pregnant felt very shameful and stigmatizing. I felt like a bad person, irresponsible and doomed to a life of misery. Determination was going to smash that negative stigma though and create the best possible life for my baby.

A caravan became my home for the next few months and my dad built me a shack on our property to live in. Creating my home in preparation for having a baby became my next task. I started thinking about how I would pay for the baby and what my future now looked like as a mum. My mum was starting to get mentally unwell with Huntingtons Disease, so we spent alot of time together during this time,  we took care of eachother and watched alot of Oprah whilst we waited for my birth.

I turned 16 in Dec 1994 and my baby was born in Feb 1995.

My birth was traumatic. After 24 hours of labour and thinking death was close by, a baby boy was born by cesarean. I thought being 15 and pregnant was hard. Being 16 and having my legs in stirrups while male doctors try pull a baby out (that was stuck in my pelvis!) was a whole other level of hard!

My new challenging path of learning how to breastfeed and care for a baby had been born. My 16 year old body felt like it suddenly belonged to everyone else.  The body that was once a developing, partying adolescent now had a whole new role.  There was always a pad to change, suppository to insert, stitches to check, and a baby to breastfeed! It was incredibly confronting and exhausting to suddenly have all these doctors and nurses in my life... And to now be responsible for keeping this little baby alive!

But I did.. and they eventually even let me go home with him.

 I'll never forget one of the midwives telling me as I left hospital that I had good "mother craft skills". I literally had no idea what that even meant. I remember thinking.. what craft did we exactly do??? But I knew it meant that I was going to be ok.

💜🌸 💜

When my son was 1 year old I studied an Associate Diploma in Youth Work. I then went to University and completed a Bachelor of Social Science. I was so happy to finish university at the same time as my friends from school . There was no way I was going to let being a mum stop me from having everything everyone else had.

After I finished my studies I got my first permanent job at a Family Support Service where I spent the next 10 years working with teenage parents and setting up antinatal and postnatal groups. There was something so important for me in using my experience to make life a little easier for other young pregnant women. I never wanted a teenage mum sitting in an antinatal group like I did at 15 feeling ashamed, isolated and that there was something wrong with them. I wanted them to feel connected, safe and have hope for themselves as a mum .. and I wanted to celebrate them, as young woman who's lives had now hit a turning point.

"let the beauty of who you are be what you do" Kahlil Gibran