I was 17 years old when I found out I was pregnant with my son Enzo. The discovery of my pregnancy brought along a roller coaster full of emotions. Before my son, I had 2 miscarriages. The first time was a surprise. I wasn’t aware of my pregnancy until I found out I had a miscarriage. When we realized we lost our baby, we were saddened. It created an emptiness inside that I never knew I needed filled. We both decided to try again, being extra careful, but when that fell through it really put a lot of stress on our relationship. My husband & I started to blame ourselves, he thought the problem was him & I thought the problem was me. We both talked and concluded that we were going to stop trying and just let whatever happens happen. After 3 months had passed, I started to not feel so good. I felt sick all the time, I had headaches and nausea. I decided out of curiosity to take the pregnancy test that I had left. I didn’t think much of it at first; expecting it to come up negative again & ready for the feeling of disappointment. To my surprise it read positive. I yelled at my husband to come here & he came running, I handed him the test to my surprise he was speechless for a good solid minute until I realized he was crying & holding me in his arms.

Throughout my entire pregnancy, he was always there for me. He has always done everything he could for the well-being of myself & our baby, even if that meant eating less so I could eat. It was rocky & hard, and when my husband lost his job due to cutbacks it was ultimately heart wrenching to see him feeling as though he let us down, but we picked ourselves back up. I had faith God had a plan for us & he did. I knew my husband would be a good father & he turned out to be an excellent one. My son Enzo is now three months old. Of course, it was hard at first. My son had health problems with his jaundice which kept him in the hospital for over a week, but he is better now & happy. One thing I do wish I would’ve tried harder to do is been able to breast-feed my son, but due to his tongue-tie it was an obstacle. Plus, pumping was something I had trouble making time for. Seeing how it was so easy using pre-made formula it was less stressful, I realized that as long as my baby is eating it doesn’t matter. Just because I use formula doesn’t make me any less of a mother than those who breast fed. My current goals are to give my baby the best life imaginable & to return & finish school.

-Cassie

I remember opening my eyes again to my mom holding Javier, saying “He’s here, your son is here!”. I tried to smile, but I dozed off again. Then I opened my eyes and saw my cousin. She was saying “You did it! You’re a mommy now! Your son is finally here!” And I dozed off again. When I woke up, I felt a little bit more energized than drowsy and I was hooked up to a beeping monitor. My mom and cousin were crying, and neither had my baby in their arms so thoughts were running through my head. I started crying because I felt so heart broken. I thought I’d lost my baby, my life, the baby I carried for 8 months. I asked my nurse where my baby was, and she told me that he was in the NICU due to unstable blood sugar, unstable temperature, and that he didn’t weigh enough to go home. I also found out that me and my baby pretty much almost completely passed away which explained why my mom and cousin were crying. My blood pressure was still high, so I also had to stay in the hospital for another week. My mom and sister took turns spending the night with me again and my cousins came to the hospital to visit me and visited Javier in the NICU. I asked my mom how much he weighed and what time did I have him because I couldn’t see him until 24 hours. He weighed 4 pounds 14 ounces, but it dropped down to 4 pounds 10 ounces. Being that he couldn’t manage his own body temperature he had to be in an incubator until he could pass an open crib test. I was discharged from the hospital on a Friday and I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay at the hospital until my baby was able to come home with me.

I was so depressed and heartbroken having to leave my baby there. I cried the whole rest of the night and didn’t want to be bothered for a couple days. I called the hospital’s NICU every 3 hours every day to check on my baby and I visited him every other day. I got to do skin to skin, I got to feed and change him, and I even got to put him to sleep and I loved every minute of it. He was making progress and getting better very quickly, and it made me so happy. When the NICU called me to come room in with Javier to take him home, I was so excited! I packed both of our bags and was at the hospital within an hour with his dad. We spent one night with him at the hospital. With all the babysitting I’ve done, I thought it would be easy and man was I wrong. He wouldn’t sleep, and he cried almost all night. I cuddled him and watched TV with him and read to him until he finally fell asleep and so did I.

The next morning, when we were getting ready to go home, I had to sign a lot of papers and set up his first doctor’s appointment and then we could go. My cousin took us to the WIC Office and then we went home and got comfortable. I was showing Javier his room and the parts of the house and he acted as if he’d been home for years. It was so funny. The first three months of his life was sort of hard because I was still new to parenting. Just like my family told me, it’s not like I’m babysitting. This is my own child. I pretty much relied on the hospital and doctor’s office whenever I thought something was wrong with him, and it always turned out to be something normal for babies or something minor. Of course, I started feeling like a bad mom for not knowing my baby like the back of my hand but who doesn’t? It’s like every time I think I’ve figured my son out I’m right back to square one. After he turned four months, it’s gotten so much easier for me and I feel like I got this. I can do this. I know what I’m doing. My baby is now seven months and I feel like the bond I have for him couldn’t grow any stronger! I feel like I’m growing as a mommy and I’m doing so much better.

-Kyra

My mom was excited and worried at the same time, and so was I. My mom started texting & calling people. She called my cousin and told her the news. She and my little cousins were so happy, but my youngest cousin felt disappointed because she thought her and Javier would be able to share the same birthday. My due date was December 19, 2017 but I had him a month early. The following morning my doctor came in at 6:15am and induced me. After that, my mom, my cousin, and I played the waiting game. I was starting to grow impatient, so my cousin brought board games, books, my tablet, and other things to keep me entertained. I couldn’t feel my contractions at all, so they gave me some medicine and sure enough I was in SO much pain I couldn’t keep myself distracted. The last time my doctor checked my cervix around four or five in the afternoon, she said I was dilated to a 7.

When I’m feeling pain, I automatically hold my breath to help bear with it. That’s where things got complicated with me and the baby. I wasn’t taught to breathe through the contractions, so every time I felt one I did the opposite. About two hours later, my doctor told me I would have to have an emergency Cesarean section because the baby’s heart rate started dropping and my blood pressure started getting worse. They gave me a kind of numbing medicine and I was waiting on them to have my room ready for me. I was so scared. I wanted my mom and my cousin both to come with me, but I could only have one, so my mom came. About an hour and a half later, my doctor came and gave me my epidural. I was still waiting on my room. About 30 minutes later, my room was ready, and they took me. I still felt drowsy and drained, so I couldn’t quite tell where I was going or what was happening. All I remember is being taken to my room and the doctors throwing a sheet over my face. I kept hearing my mom call my name and asking if I could hear her and I kept nodding my head yes. I started feeling pressure on my stomach and started wondering what they were doing. I couldn’t see my mom anymore. I couldn’t hear. I was trying to speak but I couldn’t, and I didn’t know why.

-Kyra

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

My name is R.T., and I am writing this blog about how being sexually molested at a young age has affected me as a parent. The molestation started when I was roughly four years old and continued until I was twelve. Everything is currently a blur in my mind. A lot of times when he did these things to me he would give me money or toys. I remember one time when I was about eight years old he asked me “When are you going to let me stick it in?” or he would ask me to touch it, but I won’t go into much details because these are things I try not to remember.

The events that took place caused me to have anger issues, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve been in counseling since the fourth grade. The traumatic events that took place in my childhood have caused me to develop trust issues and be very overprotective. Trust issues and overprotectiveness almost cost me my high school diploma, because I had missed so many days of school and didn’t have child care. Turning to family to watch my children was not an option. My children are always with me. The only time we are apart is if I’m at work and they are at school. I assess my children every day at bath time to make sure nothing has happened to them during the day.

All in all, my mind is only at ease when my children are with me.

~ R.T.