Personal Experiences

The stories you are about to read are true stories of young mothers and their journeys through life, pregnancy and motherhood.

Story #1: I am 20 years old and I had a very rough pregnancy. I had morning sickness all day for 9 months. I read all the books, watched all the movies, but was still terrified about labour. After being a week late, I went to the hospital for fatal heart monitoring and the next thing I knew, I had 4 nurses undressing me and preparing me for a C-section. I had a beautiful baby boy who is now 4 months old. Basically all I can say is that being pregnant is tiring, stressful, aggravating and hard, but it’s the most wonderful journey I’ve ever gone through. It’s matured me and changed my health and mind in many ways.

Story #2: When I was 15, I found out I was pregnant. What a shock! I didn’t realize what I got myself into until I pushed out a beautiful baby girl. I faced a lot of scrutiny being sweet 16 and 6 months pregnant. My daughter however saved my life from a world of drugs. She got my life back on track. I went back to high school. It was very hard. Before I graduated I got pregnant again. This time I gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. My son saved me from an extremely abusive relationship. I persevered and graduated high school without adult grad, I full fledged graduated with both my children on my laps. This year my daughter started Kindergarten. I thought it would get easier when she got to school. Yeah right! There is so much more to deal with now. The weird part is no matter how much work it has been, I could not imagine living any other way. I love being a mom. My children changed my life and I will do everything in my power to do the best for them.

Story #3: My pregnancy was pretty difficult. I knew I was pregnant before the showed it and oddly enough so did everyone else. After the first trimester things got a bit hairy. I ended up being borderline gestational diabetic and anemic. By the third trimester, I found out that my baby was frank breech, and that I had 2 options: externally turning him (very painful apparently) of C-section. I want to try turning him, but the nurse advised me that it is not always the best idea and it can be dangerous, I just went with the C-section. By the time I was about 35 weeks, the doctors had told me that I was low on amniotic fluid. I had to go to several ultrasounds to see if he was still breech or if he had turned. I also had to do fetal monitoring 2 times a day until he was born to make sure he wasn’t in any stress. On July 27th (the date I asked the doctor to deliver my baby), my baby boy was here via C-section at 8:43 am. He weighed 6lbs 14 oz and was 20.5 inches long with a full head of hair and gorgoues. And he still is =) He is not 8 months old, and he amazes me daily. He’s learned so much so fast. He’s crawling, furniture walking, even some talking (Baba and Dada). He’s changed my whole perspective on life. I’ve definitely grown as a woman, as a person and as a mother. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Story #4: With my pregnancy it was unexpected and the only way that I found out was by getting a home testing kit to make sure I wasn’t pregnant, so I could get on birth control. But I ended up being positive. When I found out I was shocked, scared, excited and nervous. My pregnancy went very well. I never had any morning sickness, strange cravings or any other typical pregnancy symptoms. But once my son was born it changed my life and I’m so happy to be a mother. My son is everything to me.

Story #5: My Mom and my younger sister’s father split up when I was 4. My Mom took care of my 2 younger sisters and I. She was a waitress and a stripper at a club and partied a lot. So I had to grow up fast. Two years later, my family had a long bloody court battle and I ended up with my mother alone. My Mom had guys in and out of the house and never really showed me much love. When I was 7 1/2, I was in grade 2 and we got a booklet from school showing us what drug paraphernalia looked like. I still remember flipping to page 1 and there it was crack, cocaine and crack pipes. It hits me right there that my Mom was a crackhead. A short time after that I moved to Nelson with my Aunt and Grandma for 2 years then I started missing my Mom so I moved back with my Mom and one of her ex-boyfriends. I started to be rebellious by getting into fights and having an addiction problem. I would always find pipes in my Mom’s stuff, which hurt me a lot, but I would always lied to myself by saying that it’s not hers. Then on my 11th birthday, my Aunt and Grandma moved back to Surrey and I moved back in with them. I found out that my Mom’s whole side of the family were crackers. The only place I felt safe was with my Grandma from my father’s side. I started going there a lot and my Dad was not to happy about me going there so much. We got into an argument and never been the same since and we never talked again. He just pays child support every month for his mistake, but now “he is with his perfect family”. I had now started staying at a guy’s house having sex, drinking and doing weed and then I got pregnant. Then it was a reality check to my family that they weren’t doing what mattered more than the drugs. Three years later, my daughter turned 2 and I was living with my Grandma from my Mom’s side and social services took my kid away because of my family. I was 15 and started doing ecstasy and cocaine. I went from 200 to 130 lbs in 9 months then I hit rock bottom. I noticed it so I moved out of my Grandma’s house because they would do drugs with me. Then I moved out with a male friend of mine. Three months later, I found the love of my life and have now been clean for 1 year and I might be getting my 5 year old daughter back in the next 2 months. So I am so happy. And that’s my story.

Story #6: To what I am going to tell you might be shocking and sad I am just getting you ready for what’s to come. My childhood was an okay one, but it wasn’t the best. I mean there were times that I wanted to be the kid that got to have experiences like going to Disneyland or going to special places with my parents. The only thing we did was fly taking long drives to Calgary, Alberta. I enjoyed these drives very much because I got to see all the wonderful wild life and the different placed what we drove through and most importantly was I was with the ones I cared most about, my mom and dad. These trips slowly disappeared and my grandparents finally moved closer to us in BC. I will now get into the good stuff about the birth of my light and joy. The wake up call was that my boyfriend at that time was telling my that I was getting fat and that really hurt me cause I knew that I wasn’t getting fat. The so called fatness was IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and it causes me to be looking fat. I keep telling him that I am not pregnant and it’s just my IBS, but he wouldn’t listen. We were always fighting and the only way he would listen to me is if I were to start crying or threaten to leave him. He didn’t like that very much. He quickly had to learn that if he didn’t smarten up fast that I wasn’t going to stick around. So after that has been said, he would go back to his old ways a couple of days or weeks later. I always felt like pulling my hair out whenever he was saying smart ass comments and not I was taking pills to help me. That wasn’t really good for me, but hey I think that would be the best way to deal with my problems cause I could be doing worst like hard drugs or sorting to hard alcohol and being stuck in that hole. I would be getting worse because the happy feeling would give my false courage. I would get even more frustrated, which would lead to more drinking and smoking the drugs. I did not realize I was pregnant until I went to the doctors and felt something in my stomach. The doctor said to clear out my daybook because I was going to be a mom. I was like how could this be? I went through hell with my dad. My grandmother would not let me live my life and was controlling. I did not want to give her the time of day (laugh, laugh).The best day was when I went into labour and have it happen at my parents’ house. I went to the hospital and the nurses checked and see if my water has broke yet. Yeah it did and said I was only 3 cm dilated and they sent me home. How about that! I twisted and turned and tried to get comfortable for a few hours, but I was in so much pain by now and headed off to the hospital. By then I was ready to push. I was blown away because it didn’t take much time at all. It only took me a few pushed and my mom said that she can she the head. Thank goodness! I was starting to get worries when there was an extra 5 nurses in the room saying that they were having problems finding my baby’s heart beat. In the end, everything turned out fine. I was in labour for 4 hours. Everyone till this day was blown away that I didn’t have any drugs or oxygen or anything. I did it all natural. She arrived at 4:54am. To wrap things up I had an awesome pregnancy and a very short labour.

Copyrighted by Betty Le and Chelle Sea de Torres of Kwatlen University College 2007