I'm pregnant.

It looks like such a small sentence, but in reality it is not small at all. Pregnancy is a big deal. It changes lives, both during a pregnancy and afterward. Bodies change, relationships change, lives change. It can be exciting and terrifying all at the same time. So I start this with a small statement with big implications.

At Scarleteen, we see many questions about pregnancy. Often they are about a specific pregnancy risk or whether someone is pregnant or not. Sometimes it is about the choices that accompany a pregnancy. Sometimes there are questions about the things that happen during pregnancy.

I'd like to share with you, in this blog, about my pregnancy. It is not my intention to suggest that this is what every pregnancy is like for every woman. I am not arguing that my choices are the "only" or "best" way. I want to talk about my experience and my perspective. I want to share the good parts and the bad parts.

To that end, I feel like it is important to tell you who I am. I’m 31 and this is my second pregnancy. I have a preschool aged child already. I am legally married to my partner. I have health insurance through my partner and my current OB/GYN is the doctor who delivered my first child via caesarian section (c-section). I have a BS and an MA and I currently work full-time. I would consider myself to be reasonably healthy. I do not share these things about myself to indicate that this is the way it “should” be done, but rather because my physical and social context make a difference in my pregnancy experience. Every woman is different and every pregnancy is different.

After much discussion, thought, and preparation, my partner & I had decided that we wanted to try to add another child to our family. It was not a decision we made quickly or lightly. Adding to a family is a big deal. With the current state of the world and in an economy where no job is guaranteed, adding another person to be fed and cared for can be a scary thought. While I do work full-time, my partner is the primary income in our household. What would happen if one of us lost a job? What if something happened to me during pregnancy or delivery? Childcare is expensive, could we manage that and the other expenses? Did we have room in our current home or would we need to move? What did we have to offer a child?

After many months of discussion, we decided we wanted to try to conceive. With our previous child, I used fertility awareness (FAM) to chart my basal temperature (BBT) and cervical mucus (CM) to help determine when ovulation was occurring (and thus to increase our chances of success). I believe we tried for about 3 months before becoming pregnant the first time. This time around, I was not able to chart as regularly as I had before. In order to get the most accurate BBTs, it’s important to chart after at least 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep and to take the temperature at approximately the same time each morning. With a preschooler who is in a “wake up ALL THE TIME” phase, this was extremely difficult. In fact, for them most part I was unable to take reliable temperatures so I relied mainly on observing my CM to even guess at ovulation (so I was likely not as accurate this time). We tried for 5 months this time before conceiving.

In spite of the fact that we were trying, I was surprised. With my last pregnancy, I knew when I had ovulated and I tested positive on a home pregnancy test at around 8 days past ovulation (which is very early). I tested at what I believed was 12 days past ovulation this time and it was negative, so I fully believed that we had not conceived during that cycle. However, just after Christmas I tested again on a whim and this time it was positive. I was surprised. I was shocked. At first, I stared at the test and couldn’t figure out what to do. “Oh my,” I thought, “What have we done? What am I going to do?” I know that probably sounds strange, given that I was deliberately trying to become pregnant. But pregnancy is a big deal. For me, I think it’s always one thing when it is theoretical and another when it is ‘real life.’ So my reaction to both pregnancies that I’ve had has been happy tempered with some shock.

Once I processed this new information and shared it with my partner, I began the process of getting used to this new state of being for me. (Incidentally, my partner was extremely happy and excited about the revelation.) It took me a few days to really wrap my head around it. For a week, it was just about all I could think about. Every other thought started with, “I’m pregnant.” Slowly, it started to become a more normal thought and I settled into being happy about it.

My positive pregnancy test was at about the time I would have missed my period. I tend to be irregular anyway, so I had not even realized I was late when I tested. I wasn’t experiencing any symptoms, I just tested on a whim. Based on my last menstrual period (LMP), I was 4 weeks pregnant when I tested positive. Health care providers generally date pregnancies based on LMP. Even though the pregnancy itself was only 2 weeks old (based on when I had likely ovulated), I would have been considered to be 4 weeks pregnant. I had already been taking prenatal vitamins, so I continued with that.

I called my OB/GYN’s office and made an appointment to come in for a first prenatal appointment at approximately 6 weeks pregnant. When I arrived for my appointment, I was given another pregnancy test and they also checked my urine to be sure I didn’t have a UTI (standard procedure in this office). After confirming the pregnancy and measuring my height, weight, and blood pressure, I met with one of the office midwives to discuss my care. She asked about my LMP and figured out my estimated due date (EDD), which would be in late August. We also talked about my medical history and my partner’s medical history. Since I’ve been with this office for several years and delivered my first child with them, my medical record is already established there. However, it was very important to go through and update the record since my last appointment there. After that, we discussed my wishes for this pregnancy and went through the usual list of dos & don’ts during pregnancy. In addition to taking prenatal vitamins, we talked about the things I needed to do to care for my health during pregnancy. There are many medications that pregnant women should not take. There are also some foods and activities that should be avoided. Although I had heard these lists before, it was a good reminder since it has been several years since my last pregnancy. The midwife also asked me about any concerns that I had. At 6 weeks, I was not experiencing much in the way of side effects, except for some cramping. I did not have cramping during my last pregnancy, so I wanted to ask about it. She assured me that this was normal and was more common with subsequent pregnancies. As long as I was not experiencing extreme pain or bleeding, it was nothing to worry about. Before leaving the office, I had to read and sign several forms about keeping appointments, the risks of smoking during pregnancy, and prenatal testing that was offered by the office. I also scheduled my next appointment for 4 weeks afterward. They also gave me an order to have some bloodwork done.

Right now, I am about 8 weeks pregnant. For the most part, I don’t feel that much different than I did before I was pregnant. The embryo is only about the size of a kidney bean, so in terms of feeling changes it is still extremely early. Of the traditional “symptoms” you hear about, the only thing I’m experiencing right now is some nausea, increased urination, fatigue and some breast tenderness. I don’t have “morning sickness” in the traditional sense. Instead, I wake up feeling fine, but start feeling nauseated sometime around 3pm. It gets worse as afternoon and evening progresses. For the most part, I don’t vomit, but the nausea can be really distracting at times. (This is not surprising for me since I had the same kind of ‘all day nausea’ with my previous pregnancy as well.) In terms of the increased urination, this is likely related to my increased water intake and growing blood volume. During pregnancy, a woman’s body produces extra blood. This means that there is more fluid for my kidneys to filter and thus more peeing. At this point, it means I’m urinating a couple of extra times each day. I do find that I am more tired during the afternoon, but so far I’m actually less tired than I was with my first pregnancy. I don’t look pregnant. My clothes still fit the way they did before. I’m not consuming massive amounts of pickles and ice cream. If I haven’t told you that I am pregnant, there is no way that someone would know.

What do we know about teen parents? Take a moment to make a mental list (or, if you’re motivated to get out a pen and paper, I won’t stop you) of all the facts and statistics you’ve heard.

In case you’re coming up short, I’ll give you a few:

• Most teen parents drop out of high school.
• Only 2% of teen parents will graduate from college by age 30.
• Many teen parents will end up on welfare, costing tax payers billions of dollars nationwide.
• The children of teen parents are more likely to fail a grade in school. Their sons are more likely to go to jail. Their daughters are more likely to become teen mothers themselves.
• The relationships of teen parents almost always fail, leaving teen mothers to be single parents.

You can read more here or here or here or watch any episode of 16 and Pregnant that features Dr. Drew. He’ll usually cover most of these points before the hour is up – while interviewing young people who are actually parenting.

Beyond these “facts”, we hear plenty of other messages on what The Candie’s Foundation calls “the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy;” their print ads tell teens they won’t move out of their parents house if they have a teen pregnancy; they’ll be spending $10,000 a year on their baby; they’ll have to breastfeed every two hours or come up with money for formula. The Candie’s Foundation isn’t the only organization putting out these types of messages – most teen pregnancy prevention, sex education, or public health organizations presume that their audience will immediately understand that teen pregnancy is harmful to young people, their children, and their communities as a whole.

Even the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy says that teen pregnancy is:

...risky for all of those involved. Compared to women who delay childbearing, teen mothers are more likely to end up on welfare. The children of teen mothers are at significantly increased risk of low birthweight and prematurity, mental retardation, poverty, growing up without a father, welfare dependency, poor school performance, insufficient health care, inadequate parenting, and abuse and neglect. (From Halfway There: A Prescription for Continued Success in Preventing Teen Pregnancy)

And if the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy says it’s a huge problem, they must be right… right?

Well… not really. You might have heard the saying that "there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." When it comes to teen parents, the statistics’ metaphorical pants are definitely on fire. First, we have to recognize that the young women who become teen mothers are different from some other young women. Not radically different, not different in a way that means we can marginalize or demonize them, but different in that: a) they chose to have sexual relationships as a teenager (most of them – some pregnancies are the result of sexual abuses or assaults; b) they probably didn’t use birth control when they were having sex (maybe they didn’t learn about it, maybe they couldn’t access it, maybe they couldn’t afford it, maybe they wanted to get pregnant, or maybe they did use it and it failed, as all methods can); c) they chose not to have an abortion (again, presuming they made this choice themselves, and had affordable access to safe abortion if they had wanted one).

Of all the teenaged women in the country, which young women are most likely to meet all of these criteria? Demographically, we know that it’s women and girls who grew up in low-income communities that have the highest likelihood of becoming young mothers.

Why is this? As I said earlier, it takes money to avoid parenthood if you’ve decided to have sex: you have to be able to afford birth control (and/or abortion), and sometimes that can be really expensive. It also helps if you went to a good school with a comprehensive sex education program, and we know that schools in low-income communities rarely have the resources needed to give students the educations they deserve. (Surprisingly, not all teens know they can get a ton of free sex education here at Scarleteen – provided they can afford or access a computer.)

But there’s also something else, and that's the extent to which young people have big plans for themselves that will conflict with parenthood. Are you planning on going to college? For some young people, the answer is an immediate "Yes!" because their parents went to college, their older siblings went to college, all their friends are going, and between their family and financial aid, they will be able to afford a post-secondary education that will help them pursue their dreams and find a decent job. However, for some young people, the answer is "I don’t know" or an ambivalent shrug, or even a straightforward "no." Maybe no one in their family has gone to college, maybe their school doesn’t have a college counselor that can talk to them about the application process and financial aid, maybe they just know they can’t afford it or what it might be able to offer them. They see their parents working jobs that don’t require a college degree. They expect to have a mid- to low-paying job, because that’s the type of job everyone around them has.

Now imagine there are two 16 year-olds, one who knows she’s going to college – she’s got a whole plan mapped out, and she didn’t even have to map it out all by herself. That’s just what she expects because that’s what everyone she knows does, and that’s what her parents expect of her. Then there’s the other one, who doesn’t expect to go to college, but she does expect to work hard at a job so she can contribute some money to her parents. That’s just what she expects because that’s what everyone she knows does, and that’s what her parents expect of her.

Both young women want to be mothers one day. Both are having sex with a boyfriend.

The first young woman has that college plan, though – and having a baby would really get in the way. It’s really hard to go to college with a new baby, and she knows that. Plus, she doesn’t know anyone who had a baby in high school. Her parents would be mortified if she got pregnant. Having a baby now would change the trajectory of her life. It’s an unacceptable risk. One night, when her boyfriend’s condom breaks, she goes to the pharmacy and buys emergency contraception. She decides if she’s pregnant, she will have an abortion. She talks to her doctor about going on the birth control pill so that she won’t have to worry should the condom break in the future.

The second young woman has a different plan. She’s going to graduate high school and get a job in the preschool where she now works part-time, and maybe eventually become a teacher there. It’s an hourly wage job, and she knows most of the women who work there already have children. Her cousin was a teen mom, and her mother had her older brother when she was 17 years old. She knows teen moms work hard and pinch pennies, but she’s going to be doing that anyway. If she has a baby now, she can count on her parents’ begrudging acceptance, and she knows that her mother would help with babysitting. She doesn’t want to live with her parents forever, but she’s not planning on moving out when she turns 18, anyway. One night, when her boyfriend’s condom breaks, she decides to wait and see. She doesn’t know much about emergency contraception, and she doesn’t have $60 to spend on it anyway. She doesn’t think much about abortion – she doesn’t think she’d be comfortable with the idea, but since she doesn’t know if she’s pregnant yet, she won’t stress about that at the moment. It’s a risk she’s willing to take: she definitely wants to be a mother someday, and if she is pregnant now, she knows she’ll find a way to deal with it.

Not-so-surprise ending: A few weeks later, the first young woman breathes a sigh of relief when her period arrives on time. The second young woman takes a test, and the plus sign appears. She’s pregnant.

Now, don’t over generalize: if you’re having vaginal intercourse, there’s a chance you’ll get pregnant, even if your dad has a vault the size of Bill Gates’. And, of course young women in low-income communities have hopes and dreams for their future. But the material privilege that a person has, the likelihood that they feel they’ll be able to achieve their goals, and the examples provided by people in their community – each of these things contributes to the decisions that they’ll make, the risks that they’ll take, and the different paths they’ll choose when faced with the same dilemma. We can conclude one thing very clearly and concretely: low-income women are more likely to become young mothers than middle and upper-income women.

What does this have to do with all those statistics we hear about teen pregnancy? It means that when we compare teen mothers to all other mothers and say, "Hey! Look how badly they’re doing!" we’re not really being fair. A woman who grew up in poverty in the United States is likely to live in poverty as an adult, too (despite what we hear about The American Dream) – and poverty itself is a huge risk factor for many adverse outcomes, including the outcomes listed in those statistics at the top of this page. When we compare teen mothers to older mothers, we’re also almost always comparing poor or poorer mothers to mothers with more resources, and that’s a problem. So, let’s look at some better comparisons:

• When we compare sisters (one who was a teen parent, one who was not), there is no association between poor infant and child outcomes based on maternal age. 1,2,5,8
• In low income communities where teen motherhood is common, young maternal age is a protective factor against low birthweight and infant mortality – the children of teen moms do better! 3,4,9,10
• When comparing women who became teen moms and women who had miscarriages as teen, there was no effect on future martial status, future hourly wages, and teen moms were less likely to live in poverty. 7
• Once young mothers are over the age of 22, they are less likely to receive public assistance than peers who were not teen parents – teen parents do not necessarily increase the burden on taxpayers. 6,7
• While young mothers are slightly less like to earn a high school diploma, they are more likely to complete a GED than peers who don’t complete high school, and they seem to work more hours in early adulthood to compensate. 7

None of this means that being a teen parent isn’t really, truly, incredibly hard. But hey – all parenting is a challenging. Newborns need to be fed in the middle night no matter how old their mothers are. Toddlers need to be constantly chased around just as much if their mom is 37 or if their mom 19. Some teenagers might not be up to the task – some adults in their thirties or forties aren't either. Let’s not ridicule, stereotype or misrepresent young parents as a justification for preventing teen pregnancy!

So now you’re probably scratching your head and asking: why, then, should we prevent teen pregnancy? For that, I invite you to stay tuned.

Gretchen Sisson is the author of Finding a Way to Offer Something More: Reframing Teen Pregnancy Prevention. You can follow her on Twitter @gesisson.

1. Furstenberg, F., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Morgan, S. P. (1987). Adolescent mothers in later life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2. Geronimus, A. (2003). Damned if you do: culture, identity, privilege, and teenage childbearing in the United States. Social Science and Medicine, 57, 881–893.
3. Geronimus, A. (2001). Understanding and eliminating racial inequalities in women’s health in the United States: the role of the weathering conceptual framework. Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, 56(4), 1–5.
4. Geronimus, A. (1996). Black/White differences in the relationship of maternal age to birthweight: a population-based test of the weathering hypothesis. Social Science and Medicine, 42(4), 589– 597.
5. Geronimus, A., & Korenman, S. (1993). Maternal youth or family background? On the health disadvantages of infants with teenage mothers. American Journal of Epidemiology, 137(2), 213–225.
6. Hoffman, S. (2008). Updated estimates of the consequences of teen childbearing for mothers. In S. Hoffman & R. Maynard (Eds.), Kids having kids: economic costs and social consequences of teen pregnancy (2nd ed.). Washington: Urban Institute Press.
7. Hotz, V. J., Williams Elroy, S., & Sanders, S. (2005). Teenage childbearing and its life cycle consequences: exploiting a natural experiment. The Journal of Human Resources, 40(3), 683–715.
8. McCarthy, J., & Hardy, J. (1993). Age at first birth and birth outcomes. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 3, 373–392.
9. Rauh, V., Andrews, H., & Garfinkel, R. (2001). The contribution of maternal age to racial disparities in birthweight: a multilevel perspective. American Journal of Public Health, 91, 1815–1824.
10. Rich-Edwards, J., Buka, S., Brennan, S., & Earls, F. (2003). Diverging associations of maternal age with low birthweight for Black and White mothers. International Journal of Epidemiology, 32, 83–90.

I had a favorite line, in high school, when debating people on the subject of abortion. It was "Hey, that thing in your stomach's not gonna come out a toaster, right? It's a baby!"

Oh, I thought I was really, super clever with that one. Because I loved talking about the babies. I talked about the babies at the high school Young Republicans Club--not only was I the president, but also the founder. I talked about the babies at Club 412, the evangelical punk teen hang-out in Fort Worth I frequented with my friends. I talked about the babies in class. I cried about the babies while I strummed my guitar. I wrote songs about the babies, imagining myself as a broken, murderous whore who regretted her abortions.

I didn't have an opinion one way or the other on abortion until I started hanging out with right-wing punk rock kids in high school. Then, somebody -- probably one of the older teenage punk rock boys I would later fend off in the back of a car or behind the chapel at church camp -- handed me a pamphlet with an aborted fetus on the front. The pamphlet told me abortion causes breast cancer and how women who abort can never be redeemed in the eyes of God and will live with heartache and depression for the rest of their lives, a shell of the beautiful thing they could have been if they'd only carried to term. I was outraged. I couldn't believe women were killing members of my own generation -- my sisters and brothers! -- just because they couldn't keep their legs together.

Because while I said it was about the babies, it wasn't. It was about slut-shaming.

I absolutely loved slut-shaming. Because I was saving myself for marriage -- well, oral sex doesn't really count anyway, does it? -- I knew that I would always be right and virtuous and I would never be a murderer like those sluts. The issue couldn't possibly be up for real debate, to my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base. Babies were simultaneously women's punishment for having premarital sex and beautiful gifts from Jesus Himself. That didn't seem like a contradiction in my mind. It was just another one of God's perfect mysteries.

After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that's what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God's wrath comes your way.

But, you know, to hear me talk, it was all about the babies. The innocent children. The mass genocide! Perpetuated, of course, by millions of American women who I imagined happily scooping out their wombs with ladles before heading back out for another gang-bang. In private, my anti-choice friends and I would laugh and laugh (or, in some cases, LOL and LOL, if we were chatting online) about how stupid women were for having premarital sex. How evil they were for not being able to control themselves. How great I was for not having sex with my boyfriend. How loved and special I was in the eyes of God because I didn't let my boyfriend, you know, do it with me.

If I'd thought about it any, I might have realized that it takes two to create an unwanted pregnancy. But the conversation was never, ever about men or their behavior. It was only about women.

So, what happened? How did I come to be editing a lefty, pinko-assed feminist blog?

Well, I got off my religious high horse and on to a sex life I enjoyed and found fulfilling.

At college, I met a wonderful, sweet Jewish boy who fell in love with me and who I fell in love with right back. And he didn't have any hang-ups about sex, though he was also a virgin. And we did all of the things except for The Big Sex, and the more I grew to love him, the more I thought back on those people I knew back home who told me sex was awful and would break me. How could sex with this guy, this absolute sweetheart, break me? And so we had The Big Sex. And it was great and fun and loving, and we kept having all of The Big Sex, for about three weeks, until I realized it was about time for my period.

Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch. I was the callous murderer-in-training. What, did I think my womb was going to grow a toaster if we had a condom mishap?

Of course not. I didn't think babies were toasters and I didn't believe I was going to birth a toaster if I got pregnant, so how had I managed to belittle women for years with this condescending, patronizing line about a small kitchen appliance? I was frozen in a kind of moral limbo: I couldn't believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision.

So I went right the heck out and got myself some hormonal birth control, is what I did.

I marched into my college women's health center -- oh, thank God they had one -- and I got my first pap smear and the Ortho-Evra patch and talked to the nurses about STD's and pregnancy and how to take care of my body. I had never had any of those conversations with my family or church or friends or teachers back home in Texas. I learned more in a two-hour visit to that college women's health center than I had in the 19 years leading up to it. And yet as a passionate anti-choicer, I had considered myself an expert on sex and reproductive health -- my own and everyone else's -- because of a few pamphlets and preachers.

Today, I see that nothing about my religious anti-choice views did anything to prevent abortion. They did a lot to shame myself and my friends, but nothing to prevent abortion. Today, I hear anti-choicers talk about the babies and the unborn and the American genocide, but what I really hear beneath all that is slut-shaming and fear of female sexuality. I hear that language clearly because I spoke it once, myself. It is a familiar language to me.

And I even have a little bemused sympathy for old men who try to pass anti-choice legislation. Because they really will not ever have to worry about abortion. And once, I thought I wouldn't, either. So I see where they're coming from. I see how blind to the experiences of others they are. Privilege does that to people. If they weren't so damned full of themselves, and so damned politically powerful, I might even find them funny.

What saddens me more than anything else are women who want to make abortion either so inaccessible as to render it impracticable, or who want to outlaw it altogether. Because I truly believe that most women, anti-choice or otherwise, who've experienced even a flicker of uncertainty about a pregnancy in this country since 1973 have been glad, in their hearts, to have a choice. I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish and shame women.

There is nothing "pro-life" about sonogram bills and denying Medicaid funding to (some!) rape victims or allowing doctors to opt out of giving pregnant women life-saving abortions. I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas.

I was a girl growing up in Texas who was failed by abstinence-only education and soured by extreme religious dogma.

I don't want other girls to go through that, too. And so if you've gotten through this whole essay, consider donating to Planned Parenthood. Get on a NARAL mailing list. Fight HR3. Stand up against empty religious and political pandering and stand up for real solutions like affordable health care, comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access.

Originally published at Hay Ladies.