“No one knew I was pregnant. I was scared. I was in denial”.
Susan was just thirteen
at that the time. The year was 1984.
“Teen pregnancy wasn’t glorified back then. Girls were not
trying to get pregnant to be on TV”.
Susan felt like she was in
trouble, as if she had done something wrong. She had thoughts of having her
baby in the woods and bringing it home to tell everyone she found it. However,
when she approached her mother at 3am with complaints of a tummy ache, those thoughts
were gone.
“My
mother was a nurse so she got her stethoscope to check my abdomen and asked me if
I could be pregnant”.
Susan’s tummy ache was the beginning of
labor contractions and she went to the hospital right away. At 3:41am, Susan’s
daughter, Rachel was born and weighed in at three and a half pounds. Susan
admires her mother for how she handled that night.
“My mom
was calm. She told me that having a baby was a huge responsibility and that had
choices but I knew my baby didn’t chose to be born to a thirteen year-old. I
knew that my baby deserved to have a good mom like everyone else and that’s
what I committed to do.”
That commitment and devotion to her
daughter would be Susan’s strength and guiding force going forward. Although,
Susan’s daughter was small, she was not afraid or nervous like parents are now.
Even with her daughter in the Intensive Care Unit covered in wires, Susan
jumped right in and started caring for Rachel. People at the hospital talked
with Susan about caring for an infant but she recalls:
“It was nothing like they do now. No videos. No
classes. I wasn’t even on the maternity floor with the other moms.”
The hard work of being a young
mom hit Susan immediately. Her mom was very supportive but made it clear that
she had had her children and Susan would be caring for her baby on her own.
“People would look at
me, you know. As I was walking by, I would see them point and they would say, ‘hey,
that’s the girl who had that baby’. I wasn’t me anymore. I was that girl who
had the baby and I had to grow up really fast. Other thirteen year-olds did not
go to the doctor alone and here I was taking my baby to the doctor.”
Susan remembers the challenges she faced
almost thirty years ago.
“Everything was hard. I tried to go back to ninth grade after
having Rachel but the school didn’t want me back because I had moved out of my
mom’s house. They just made everything hard. I would take Rachel into a doctor
and no one was helpful. They thought we were sisters.”
Susan felt
the judgment and shaming other felt towards her. When her daughter had a bump
on her head, people jumped to conclusions and assumed abuse had taken place. At
that same time, a married wealthy couple had a child die from abuse but no one
did anything about that; but because she was young and poor, she was reported
to DHS. The allegations were unfounded.
Susan
had a horrific experience taking her daughter in to the eye doctor.
“I knew something was
right with Rachel. She had differences. Her back arched, her eyes were
different, and she couldn’t hold her toys like other kids did. He said she was
mentally retarded. Watching my mom advocate for me and stand up to that eye
doctor taught me how to be an advocate, showed me how to commit and stand up
for my daughter”.
Rachel was later diagnosed with cerebral
palsy. Susan reflects on her experiences as a teen mom and acknowledges that her
oldest daughter’s disability and having two more children in her teenage years
compounded her challenges as a young mom.
“I had my second daughter, Micah, at 15, just one month
before my Sweet Sixteen, and my son, Evan, at 19. It was hard having more
children. I thought having three wouldn’t be much different than having two.
What was I thinking? Fortunately, I was with their father and we were married
for 26 years but we were poor. We were in poverty. I did the best I could with
what I had. My kids did not know they were poor, I made it work.”
Many young moms would have been beaten down by these experiences. How did you
make it work? What allowed you to keep going when others might have given up?
“You are right. I had
friends who got pregnant after me and they didn’t take care of their children.
For me, it was that commitment. I knew my children deserve a lesser mom, they
deserved a good mom and that’s what I did.”
Susan participated in
a young moms program five months after having her first child. At thirteen, she
was the youngest in the program but she remembers that it meant the world to
her have support. Susan paid this support forward by volunteering for at a
young moms program for ten years.
“They asked me to volunteer for two years and I stayed for
ten. It was an amazing experience because I know what it feels like to be them
and need support.”
As a volunteer, Susan taught young moms parenting
skills, how to potty train their children and how to consistently manage
problem behaviors.
“My
advice to teens would be, it is a lot harder than it looks. It just irritates
me to see these young girls who want babies in order to have someone who loves.
Babies are not dolls. Being a teen mom is not glamorous. I would not recommend
it anyone.”
Susan encourages teens who cannot abstain from
sexual activity to use birth control. She has also advocated for condoms in
schools and the Safe Haven law.
“Being a young mom is hard. I didn’t want that for my
children.”
Susan’s commitment to her children and involvement as
an advocate is to be admired, as she was successful in preventing her children
from becoming teen parents and has impacted the lives of many other young people.
I cannot
thank Susan enough for sharing her experiences with me! She was brave enough to
volunteer as my first ever phone interview and I am eternally grateful as her
voice is one of strength, resiliency, and the power of commitment. For more
information on teen pregnancy visit: http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/
Here is a beautiful
picture of Susan with her now grown-up children:
