Life as a Teen Father-to-be

By Thomas C.

I started out as a 15-year-old who liked to do fun things like play pool. Then one day I went to the movies and met this girl. She looked young and pretty and had green eyes. The next day I went to her house and we talked for a little while. I asked her to kiss me, so she did, then I asked her out. So we started a nice relationship and, one night, we had sex. That first night I had sex I didn’t use protection because I thought it wasn’t going to happen to me, but ever since that day my life has changed all around. My girlfriend got pregnant and now I’m about to be a father.

When my girlfriend told me she might be pregnant, it made me feel like a father already, like I already had a big responsibility. I didn’t feel ready for that responsibility, so I told her I thought she should get an abortion and she said, "OK." But next thing you knew, she already had a big belly. My mother had a feeling she was pregnant and brought home a pregnancy test for my girlfriend. It came out positive. I expected my mom to be very mad at me. But she started jumping up and down and telling all the family and all her friends about how she was going to be a grandmother. That made me happy to know I had her support to go through all this stuff. But I still felt very strange.

I Feel Strange

Sometimes I still feel strange. First of all, my girlfriend is due in one month. Time has gone very fast and sometimes I still don’t believe that she is pregnant. In a way, I also feel that I only have a couple of weeks left to have my childhood. I suddenly feel very old, as if I cannot do the things I used to like doing, like hanging out or sleeping over at my friends’ houses. Another thing is that I still live with my mother and I feel I will have to depend on her for financial support and grandmother support. I’m only 15 and I don’t even have that much money to dress myself. Imagine, now I have to go and get a better job and support not only myself, but my son and my girlfriend. It bothers me to think of depending on my mother for help because she didn’t make that baby, I did.

I Want to Be There

I know there are some young fathers out there who don’t think about these things ‘cause they don’t provide their children with nothing, and they still got the balls to say that those are their children. I don’t want to be that way. I want to try to provide my child with everything I can, including love, so I can prove to all those other teen fathers that they can do the same.

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