17 & Pregnant

Hi! You may or may not know that I got pregnant with my first baby girl when I was 17 years old, a Senior in high school. Well, my world is coming around full circle with that same beautiful baby girl turning 17 today! It has me feeling all the feels. I have thought about writing a blog post on my past for a really long time. Turning 35 this year has me reflecting on the last 17 years.  Some of those years seem like such a blur to me. I feel as though I am finally in the absolute best place in my life and I can be extremely vulnerable and tell you all my story. I am telling my story in hopes to reach out to moms of teenage daughters, to moms who have been through similar situations and to teenage girls that have been through this or are going through this now and to anyone else out there who can relate. 

Ok, grab a glass of wine because this is a long one. For starters, I grew up in a very tight-knit household with my parents and my 3 older siblings, 1 brother and 2 sisters. My mom, my sisters and I are very very close. We talked about a lot growing up but for some reason the “sex” topic was not such an open dialogue that was discussed. I mainly talked about it with my friends, which we were so young that we did not really know what we were even talking about and to be honest, sex ed classes back then were not as emphasized and informative as they are today. 

It was 2002, the end of my junior year of high school where my dad was the head Varsity baseball coach and my mom was a teacher and dance coach. I was on my mom’s dance team and my high school boyfriend was on my dad’s baseball team, if you could imagine that?? That was not awkward at all! LOL. My boyfriend and I at the time had been together for over a couple of years. We were young and in love and in our teenage minds the next thing to do was to have sex. I look back on the day that I lost my virginity and I think to myself, “oh my gosh I was so young!!” I was barely comfortable in my own skin, let alone comfortable with being ready to have sex. I wish so badly I could go back and tell myself, “wait, just wait.” At that age you have no real idea what you are doing. You have no idea that you will feel all sorts of emotions and how these emotions can affect you in such a huge way! The thought of me getting pregnant or how easily I could have gotten pregnant hardly crossed my mind…even with using protection. I swear I thought I was invincible. “Get Pregnant? Yea right! That won’t happen to me.”

Then February of my last year of high school came around and my period did not come. It was the night before my Senior Formal. One of my very best friends came over because we were going to do a trial of our makeup for the dance. I had told her that I had not gotten my period. I was in denial and just thought to myself “nope, I cannot be.” She looked at me and said, “come on, we are going to the store to get a pregnancy test”. She went in and bought one for me. We got back to my house and took the test. My heart was in my stomach. I saw the two lines and just fell to my knees. What was I going to do? I was 17! I just remember calling my sisters right away and they were so positive and helpful. At the time I was so scared to tell my parents. My mom was in Hawaii and my boyfriend was away at college. I just remember feeling so alone. The next morning my mom called me, and she could tell something was wrong. She then asked me, “are you pregnant?” I was shocked she knew. Mothers intuition, she just knew. We both started crying, she was so upset she was not home with me. Not an ounce of anger ever came out of her. I was so scared to tell my dad. My dad is very intimidating when you first meet him and can come off a little scary, LOL. So, I had no clue how he was going to react. The next day, my mom came home. She walked right in and gave me the biggest hug as I was crying my eyes out and then she says, “ok let’s go tell your father.” We sat down and I am still sobbing crying. My mom tells him and the first thing he says is, “why are you crying so much?!” then gives me the biggest hug and says, “we will figure this out.” I was shocked! Both of my amazing parents were so understanding and were going to be right there with me through this all. You do not see situations like this very often. I was so grateful for my parents. It was obviously very hard at first for my boyfriend and his family to accept the idea of us having a baby, but they all came around so quick and were supportive as well. My daughter was the best thing that ever happened to not only me but her dad and so many people around her. She has so many aunts and uncles that spoil her rotten and have been by our sides this entire time! She was the first grandbaby on both sides, so you can imagine how much attention she got. My group of girlfriends and my family were my rock through all of this. 

Once I accepted the fact that I was 17 and was going to have a baby, the reality sunk in. It did not take long for the whole entire high school to find out. I was mortified. Lots of whispering behind my back. I just remember coming home from school crying every day. On top of it all I was extremely sick throughout my pregnancy. I would have to run out of class to go throw up in the bathroom all day long. I was truly blessed to have a close group of best friends in my senior class, both boys and girls that supported me the entire way. Everyone really stepped up to help me and be there for me. It was a long senior year of high school, but I made it through and graduated when I was 6.5 months pregnant, showing and all!  

That next school year I saw my friends go off to college as I was about to have my daughter. My boyfriend continued with college and I decided that I was going to go to the junior college in town and the baby and I were going to continue to live with my parents. My boyfriend went to college a few hours away and would come home as much as possible. I worked at our family restaurant and went to school full time to get my A.A. I never stopped going to school because I knew if I stopped, I probably would not go back. It was some of the hardest days of my life, working, going to school and being a teenage mom.  If you could imagine I never changed a diaper until she was born. There were many sleepless nights and nights feeling like I just wanted to be a kid again, but I knew that I had to step it up for my girl. Yes, my parents were there to help but they also made it very clear to me that this was my daughter and I would be the one raising her, which is of course what I wanted. I was the one who was up with her in the middle of the night when she had colic so badly, colic? Yea I had no clue what that was either, LOL. These were all the things that you do not think about when you are a teenager having sex. With that being said, I do believe that God had a plan and that was the plan for me, and I would not change it for a second. Getting pregnant so young changed me as a person, made me grow up extremely fast and for that I am grateful. I ended up graduating from Sacramento State University with a degree in Child Development and I am happy to say it only took me 5 years.

Now, here I am 35 years old trying to raise my now 17-year-old, along with my two younger daughters, the best way I know how. I always told myself that I would start the communication about sex before she ever even had a boyfriend. Mainly, so she would know that the communication was always open and welcomed. I wanted her to always feel safe and comfortable to come to talk to me. We have the “sex” talk probably way too much and I know she thinks I am nuts by how much I talk to her about it! I am very open with her about how she was brought into this world and getting pregnant at such a young age, but I am also very careful with my words when talking about my situation. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me and changed my life for the better BUT I also want her to know that that is not always the case for most teenagers. I want her to know how hard it was to be a young mom, so she understands the responsibilities that come along with having sex. Yes, I had the support of many people but it didn’t change the fact that I didn’t get to go away to college like all of my friends and that I had to work and go to school full time to be able to support her and I. I want her to be able to have a college experience and live her teenage years to the fullest! Being a mom is the hardest job in the world but the most rewarding. It is not easy raising a teenage daughter and sometimes I feel as though I am failing. So, if you are a mom of a teenager, I feel you! The biggest thing I want to get across with me sharing my story is to talk with your children. Open that door of communication. Do not be afraid to have the “sex” talk because most likely your child wants you to talk with them. The more often you are having the conversation, the less awkward it becomes. Try to be as real as possible when talking with them. Not only talk with your child about sex but also about love and consent as well. If you are talking and explaining things to your children, then you know you have done your part in raising them and the rest is up to them! I am not a professional at all and all of this is my own personal advice and opinions. I hope that my story can help anyone else going through something similar. 

Also, I am sure you are wondering what happened with my daughters father and I, but you will have to wait for the next blog post to find that out but I will tell you that our parents encouraged us to wait to get married. We got married in 2011 but then ended up divorcing in 2014. Now I am happily re-married to the most amazing man and in the best place of my life!

XOXO, Kindra

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