I am a teen mum.

I was 14 years old, going to gigs every weekend and getting drunk, not listening in school, spending my time hanging round the streets. I’d never really had a proper relationship before, only the little kid relationships that last about a month. I didn’t know anything about life or what being an adult entailed. I was just living life as it came and enjoying myself. I was so naive and so immature.

It was a very cold Halloween night in 2012 and as usual, instead of going out and spending Halloween with my family I went to a gig with my two best friends. I met some people who asked if I wanted to be in their band as I’m a drummer. I immediately said yes and got told to add the guitarist on Facebook as he had made the band. We got talking and I thought he was amazing. Sure enough from then we formed a relationship and I thought I loved him. Things happened and on January the 5th 2013 I fell pregnant.
I took the morning after pill so thought there would be no chance. But then I started feeling odd. My boobs got huge, I was sleeping alot and I needed to pee loads. So I went to the emergency doctors with a suspected water infection.
“your daughter is pregnant” the lady shouted at my mum.
“what do you want to do? Do you want me to book her in?”
By this she meant for an abortion. I was absolutely horrified. Not only had I just found out I was pregnant at 14, I was already facing discrimination and assumptions . This was just the start.

I instantly knew i was going to keep the baby, i didn’t even consider the other option.  I may of only been 14 but i knew i would be able to cope, i mean come on, i got myself in the situation, i needed to man up!  I text the father and i assumed he’d be happy but my god was i wrong.  What me and my family were going to face for the next two years i wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

I’m not going to go into what happened, i might another time, it just gets me so angry and upset.  BUT basically, him and his family were not happy that i was keeping the baby and said and did very nasty things.

Despite this, stupidly enough i stayed with the father up until i was 36 weeks pregnant, even though i faced constant emotional abuse about my appearance and a lot of other things. This abuse has basically ruined my life and i will probably never like myself because of some of the things he said.  One example is ‘your stretch marks are so ugly when will they go?’.  Who in their right mind says that to a pregnant girl carrying their child? I should love them because i was lucky enough to grow my baby inside me, which is such an amazing thing, but i don’t and have tried so many ways to get rid of them because of things he said. I spent near enough my whole last 20 weeks of my pregnancy in my house because i was too scared to go out in case people thought bad of me and in case i saw the baby’s dads parents.

I completed my GCSE’s in year 10 at school whilst i was pregnant, and luckily passed them all, so i could take the whole of year 11 off to spend with my baby.  I was due to give birth on the 28th of September 2013.

Once i had finally seen my senses and realised the baby’s dad wasn’t good for me i ended things.  I didn’t allow him at the birth because i felt self conscious and on 4th of October 2013, aged 15 i gave birth to an amazing baby girl who was 8lb 7 (i got told i was going to have a small baby! 😦 ). She was so perfect, i instantly fell in love.

I still got abuse from the father and his family, and they tried their hardest to ruin my first few precious days with her.  But i had my baby girl, nothing could get in between that.

Then came all the hard things about being a mum-breastfeeding, abuse off strangers in public, night feeds, expressing etc but it was still amazing.

The last 2 years have been the hardest but most amazing time of my life and it kills me that I’m a stereotypical single teenage mum but I will make my baby proud. I’m on my way to going to uni, which I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t got pregnant.  I’m now 16 with a 14 month old girl and i’m sure i’ll go into other things that happened with the dad/the last 14 months with my baby girl in other blogs but for now i’m finished. All I want to say is, if you’re in an abusive relationship, get out of it. I know that’s harder than it sounds but please. Don’t let yourself get hurt like I did.

I still face struggles with her dad, i doubt that will stop for a long time, he will never mature. It is a lot harder that i expected it to be, i have to realise we couldn’t be the family i thought we could be, and i’ll probably never have someone interested in me,  but i know i have produced an amazing, wonderful, perfect girl and i don’t need anyone else.