Dear Agatha,
I am 16 years of age and recently discovered that I am pregnant for my 17 year old boyfriend. I got pregnant quite by accident. I honestly didn’t plan to but that day after a social function, my boyfriend suggested I accompany him to his friend’s place. While there, I took a glass of wine which unknown to me contained a considerable amount of alcohol.
Against my better judgment I allowed him sleep with me for the first time that day. When I realized what I had done and worried about getting pregnant, he assured me once wasn’t enough to get me pregnant, that it took repeated lovemaking to get a woman pregnant.
When I didn’t see my period in May, I went to him, he told me not to worry that it would come. And when it still didn’t come in June, I again told him. He gave me some tablets, nothing happened.
Now my mother has found out my state and my boyfriend is denying me and my pregnancy. I don’t know what to do because he is the only man I have known and he knows he is responsible. When I told my mother about the tablet he gave me, he denied everything.
Now my mother is insisting I keep the baby after being assured by the doctor that the baby is okay. She is also insisting I stay with her to have the baby being her only child. She has refused the option offered by my father, that I go to stay with my paternal grandmother until after the baby is borne. According to my mother, facing the music would teach me never to disgrace the family again.
I feel like committing suicide. I have just finished writing my Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. How can I endure the shame of this pregnancy? Please help me. Why is mother being this difficult?
Yeside.
Dear Yeside,
Your mother is only doing what she has to do to protect you from yourself now and in the future. Whether you stay with your grandmother or not, doesn’t remove the reality of your situation, that you are about to be a mother when you have barely emerged from childhood yourself. And what makes you think your grandmother would pamper you for getting pregnant at your age? Are there no people living there who would also wonder at your values and go ahead to make fun of you? There is nothing like experience which is obviously the message your mother is trying to pass across to you.
Her refusal to let you go; is to demonstrate the depth of her hurt and disappointment. Being her only, she must have had high plans for you, which doesn’t include making her a premature grandmother. How do you think she would feel seeing her only child at 16 pregnant with a child whose father has denied? How do you think it makes her feel? Happy or sad at the nonsense you have made of whatever values she gave to you? Do you realize that the society would blame her for your act, particularly as her only child?
The tendency is for everybody to think you acted the way you did because she pampered you too much. Your blame in all these would be minimal compared to her own in addition to the psychological burden of the personal blame she would ascribe to herself at the way you have turned out.
It may be your first time but the evidence of pregnancy has made you more experienced in the game than any of your friends who have managed to escape the stigma of carrying a pregnancy at 16. Don’t complicate this for her through the same selfish attitude that got you into this mess. You have made one silly mistake; don’t make another one by attempting suicide. Your parents, especially your mother would be the loser, not the man who put you in the family way who for now has taken a retreat to enable him enjoy the freedom of his age. Even if you have given up on yourself and end your own life, that child you carry deserves to live and for its sake, you must live for it.
Now you know that that once can get a woman pregnant. Anytime a woman allows a man inside her, she risks being pregnant provided it is the right time of the month. He will definitely come back but ensure when he comes back he has a lot to be sorry for. You won’t achieve that by killing yourself, making him sorry for ever abandoning you when you needed him the most.
If you die, he would never think of you or have any reason to be sorry for what he did to you and your unborn child. Your motivation is to make him sorry hence the need for you to stay alive and give your parents all the cooperation to help you bounce back on your feet with the most minimal side-effects. That you are pregnant shouldn’t stop you from improving yourself. Deploy this period of pregnancy into positive things, those things that would improve you at the end of the day. That you have finished writing your O’level examination doesn’t mean you are done with your education.
By now, you must have a clear idea of what course youintend to study at the university. Use this time to read and prepare for your Joint Admission and Matriculation Board Examinations so you don’t waste unnecessary time catching up with your mates. Also think of ways of reducing the burden of caring for the baby on your parents by going into a craft that can earn extra money for you. If you invest your time positively, you would be too busy to notice what anybody is saying as well as time to brood over your situation.
Whatever happens, learn to take each day at a time. What has happened has, there is nothing you can do about it. Learn to relax, eat and enjoy the best of this situation to give you the strength to do what you must do when the time comes. Always have this at the back of your mind that you don’t have the patent for what you have done, countless women before you found themselves precisely in this situation you are today and many more after you would also make the same mistake. Once the baby is born, you will be as good as new provided you are willing to learn from your mistake. If you are wise, use this as a springboard to launch yourself into huge and blinding success.
You could see me if you live in Lagos for a little mother and daughter talk.
Good luck.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment