My name is Kyra, and my blog is about my seven-month experience with parenting. My son wasn’t planned, but I wouldn’t trade him for the world. When I first found out I was pregnant, I cried. I wasn’t ready to raise a baby at 18. I took around five home pregnancy tests, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t pregnant. When I finally went to Hillcrest Pregnancy Care Center and took a test there, it became more real to me that I was a mom-to-be and that I was about two months along. I think once I was three months, I accepted the fact more that I was carrying a baby, and I was happier knowing that other people were happy for me and people truly cared about me and my growing baby. As my pregnancy carried on, I found out I was having a baby boy. I started picking baby names every other week, and shopping for outfits and baby stuff, and thinking about what colors I’d decorate his room.

When I was 7 months pregnant, I started thinking about how much space my son and I would be taking up in my mom’s small apartment. I wanted to move out but move somewhere close. I started looking for cheap apartments close to my mom’s place and was about to schedule a tour of the apartments when my mom announced that we were moving. We finally got our apartment when I was 8 months pregnant and my aunt threw me a baby shower, just two weeks after that. I don’t have many friends, so not a lot of friends came. It was pretty much just my family and I was okay with that. See, I didn’t believe my cousin when she told me that everyone will want to be besties with me and want to be involved in my child’s life. I didn’t believe they’d want to be a god parent and want to be this and that, but when he’s finally here they’d disappear until I experienced it myself.

Five days after my baby shower, I was admitted to the hospital because my doctor thought I had preeclampsia and she was also worried about my kidneys. I stayed a whole week at the hospital because the nurses were trying to get my blood pressure to go down, which failed. It kept rising then going down and then rising even more, so I was on different blood pressure medications plus the magnesium. I felt drowsy, sleepy, and drained but I couldn’t sleep especially with worried family members coming to visit me. My mom and sisters took turns staying and spending nights with me at the hospital. One night, when it was my mom’s turn to stay with me, my doctor came in to talk to me. He told me that I had severe preeclampsia, and due to that I had to be induced and I’d be giving birth to Javier the next night.

-Kyra