I just read an article that The News Junkie of The House emailed out... that some girls from Massachusetts supposedly made a pact to get pregnant together. All of them are under age 16.
One even got knocked up by a 24 year old homeless guy!! (check it out here if you wish Pregnancy Pact)
What the hell were they thinking?
There's speculation that they wanted someone to love them unconditionally, because they weren't getting it from boys or parents or whatever. What the fuck. Just because you pop out a kid does not mean you're going to get a little mini-you that is programmed to love you. And actually, when you hear screaming and crying at 3 am, I imagine you won't love it very much either.
In fact, unless you are well-established with job security and strong family support, there are tons of reasons that children will only serve to make your life miserable from day one. One girl from The House got pregnant last year and it was NOT a pretty sight. She decided to keep it for a veritable host of reasons (mainly religion and because she had the luxury of choosing due to her family's ability to support the added burden). At the time, I was in a bunch of reproductive health classes and I witnessed what I learned first hand, which was educational and whatnot for me, but massively sucky for her.
Everyone who does not fall under the category of well-established and in a secure point in their lives who is making a child with the person whom they love and who loves them... should read the following and if you still want to have a child, you should be taken to a mental institution.
Babies may be cute... but remember that during pregnancy, fetuses are essentially parasitic leeches. They take over your body and use it as a host: sucking your life force, nutrients, and will to live out of you. In fact, we learned in Human Reproduction that if an expecting mother doesn't get enough calcium to support the baby as well, the baby will steal it from the mother's bones. Hello future osteoporosis. Sadly, while they suck nutrients out of your body, they manage to force you to gain anywhere from 20-50lbs and give you unsightly stretch marks which are pretty much here to stay.
Pregnancy is not glamorous. The Pregnant Girl in The House puked every morning and sometimes into the afternoons. She missed a lot of class while collapsed over a toilet. Really. This is college. If anything she should have been puking because she drank too much, but no. Ankles retain fluid and suddenly shoes don't fit right anymore. You will not be able to walk properly and will instead be subjugated to waddling. Not to mention you will be hot all the time and unable to find a comfortable position to sleep once you really start to get big. Did I mention really weird cravings and heartburn? And once that baby starts moving around, he or she will find the exact position to make you most miserable.
Oh yes, and the incessant need to pee. That baby will lodge itself in the precise position to kick your bladder just for fun. The Pregnant Girl in The House had to pee all the freaking time. Not only that, this one time when she was about 7 months, she fell in the toilet and needed help getting up. It was definitely not cute.
And of course, that's just all the beginning.
Pregnancy often involves lots of needles. Not your average syringe needles...we're talking the big kahunas. During an amniocentesis, which tests the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus for gender as well as deformities, the doctor sticks a rather long needle into your abdomen or vagina to broach the placenta. Though they use local anesthetic, this is not a pleasant experience. Also, once you go into labor, if you opt for the epidural, you're going to get one long ass needle up your spine, which serves to block off all nerve signals to the brain from your lower body.
And of course you've had to have seen movies depicting labor. Let me tell you, the movie Knocked Up was tame in comparison. The Pregnant Girl was screaming her head off every time she had a contraction and practically ready to start throwing objects that surrounded her bedside. Luckily, a nurse was wise enough to place these just out of her reach. Then during the actual labor process, doctors often have to take scissors and cut your vaginal opening to make it bigger for the baby to pass through without tearing. Cut. That's right. Because apparently clean cuts are easier to stitch up than tears. Think about THAT.
And then once it's all over, you have a child. A baby that will scream, cry, and ooze fluids of various colors and viscosities out of its every orifice. This process usually occurs at inopportune times like 3 am in the morning, which massively sucks in itself, let alone if you have work or school the next morning. The screaming will stop once you pick up the baby and feed it and rock it but once you set him or her down, the crying will commence once more.
Your body will still be doing weird things. Like oozing milk from your breasts, which will then cause you to resort buying bra pads to absorb the excess. They will also hurt if they're too full of milk so you'll probably need to invest in a milk pump.
And then there are the added financial burdens. The base average that I've read in the first year of life... is a whopping $10,000. And this is just for the BARE minimum. Don't forget all the work hours you won't have since you'll be too tired or unable to find work due to lack of affordable daycare.
Then when you don't have time to properly raise your baby and start disciplining them from the start, they turn into little terrors which evolve into bratty tweens and then you get your breed of future idiots and general drains on society.
Sure, there are exceptions to the rule. The Pregnant Girl happens to have parents who are well off and grudgingly willing to help her out. The agreement is that they will help raise the baby if she finishes school and gets into a real career. She's lucky. But guess what, even if you want unconditional love, you can't always have it since she can only see her baby on weekends or when she has time. Forget hanging out with friends, all of your time will be divided on work and the baby. The Pregnant Girl had to deactivate from The House because she just doesn't have time to be an active. She didn't have a choice.
Don't be stupid and make stupid choices without examining the facts. The whole childbirth/childrearing experience will come in time when you can actually experience the joys because you won't be constantly worried or preoccupied with the horrors. I hate when I read about people voluntarily doing things to make their life unnecessarily complicated.
What really took the cake though, was the fact that the doctor and the nurse at the school clinic resigned due to inability to distribute contraceptives confidentially. While I applaud their stand for contraceptives as another choice, do they REALLY think that was the issue here? Assuming that these girls were seeking to get pregnant, obviously they wouldn't have used birth control even if it were available to them. The root of the problem was not lack of contraceptives, it was the fact that they only chose to see the bright side of pregnancy and ignore all of the crap. In the end, they may not be to blame. After all, why would they need to make unconditional love if they received it or had support or someone to talk to them? Based on this story alone, I can't lay blame on the parents either... who knows what the real facts are? But somewhere along the way, there was a misconnect... whether it be in the support system or the inability to communicate the girls' wants and needs properly.
I can't wait to leave on the cruise and forget about sad stories like this about people making stupid decisions.
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