Becoming A Mother When You’re Still A Child

For the past 24 hours, I have been hopping from mummy blogs to mummy blogs. Not your average married 30-somethings but girls who are younger than me! Seeing 1990, 1991, 1988 etc in their profiles broke my heart. Being pregnant before you graduate is always a nightmare that nobody wants to be in.

Firstly, I didn’t know there is a whole community of young teenage mummy bloggers. Most of these girls are from Singapore but I’m sure their experiences don’t deviate too far away from Malaysian girls who go through the same thing. They are still very much like the young girls that they should be, adoring online boutiques, oohing and aahing over Hello Kitty handphones, going shopping with their girlfriends. Looking at photos of them, most of them don’t look a day over 16.

It takes a certain level of patience to read through their entries as most of them type as if they are chatting but the stories of their lives are so engaging that you just keep clicking through all their archives. It’s a life that one can only imagine as the worst case scenario.

The first blog I read belong to this girl who pinged below me at innit. She’s only 18 this year and fortunately for her, she has a loving husband and a supportive family to tend to her and the baby. One thing I realize about all these girls is how absolutely in love they are with their babies. From the way I look at it, it’s a child loving another child. It goes to show how natural a mother’s love is. Looking at their husbands, they are equally as young as their wives and when they cuddle their child in the photos, it looks like an older brother holding his younger sibling.

These young couples still enjoy lives in a very typical fashion: online gaming and the stuck-to-the-computer syndrome that our generation is too familiar with.

In one post, this girl wrote, “I read my friends’ blogs and they are all feeling frustrated over which polytechnics they should go to. It could’ve been me in their positions, thinking of what to study. But I’ve skipped that phase of life and went straight into parenthood. I don’t regret, I’m only starting parenthood much earlier.”

While a few of them are still in very loving relationships, not all are as fortunate. Some of them write about how upset they are as they cannot feel the love from their husbands anymore. “No more hugging, no more touching. I just want him to tell me that he still cares,” wrote another girl. Some of them chose to be single parents.

But there is this one girl who takes the cake. Only 19 this year and her daughter is already five years old. She knows that what she did in the past was wrong and wild but she has no regret in bringing her daughter to this world. I wouldn’t say she’s wild as the person she had the child with was a boy she knew since she was four. In one post, she wrote about how they played together as children, how he, at the age of 8, told her mom that he would take care of her when he grows older, and how he would carry her on his bicycle. 🙂 A total match made in heaven.

I don’t know how old the boy would’ve been now but he didn’t lead a very long life. The girl didn’t mention how he died but she only says she misses him and how she hangs out a lot with her mother-in-law. Her MIL also shows the little girl photos of her “Daddie who is in heaven!”. She is very lucky as her mother-in-law brings her out shopping and helps her take care of her little girl.

Life for this strong girl is not easy as well. Her mother died before she even became pregnant(before she was 14?). Despite all her hardship, she still maintains a cheery persona. I admire her courage, I really do.

And as if there is not already too much on her plate, she chose to adopt her cousin brother’s son. A 7 year old boy who seems to be giving some problems at school. She blogs about how frustrated she is when she teaches him to become a better person. The reason that she chose to take over as guardian for the little boy is that she didn’t want the little boy to grow up in a broken family(lots of drama from her cousin brother and his ex and current gf.). Having to tend to a child of your own AND taking on another kid? Wow..

Another cool tidbit I got from another one of the blogs is how this girl will go back to school after her confinement period. “I wonder how I’ll catch up!” she writes, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. She’s one of the luckier ones I guess.

There are dozens of these blogs out there but I don’t think I will link them in this post. As it is, they are already fending off insults from anonymous readers about being young mothers. Though I do not advocate their actions (getting pregnant so early), I do applaud them for their bravery. Taking on motherhood so early is scary in this day and age. I could never do that! As it is, I’m already fretting about who will look after my kids when I’m off to work, who will send them to school etc.
None of these girls wrote about their reasons for not aborting but they only mentioned how grateful they are that they didn’t choose abortion.

There is a story that keeps popping up in all these mothers’ blogs. Most of them copied and pasted it on their blogs as they can relate to it so much. It changed my mind about adoption, you should read it as well:

“Dear Mommy,

I am in Heaven now, sitting on Jesus’ lap. He loves me and cries with me; for my heart has been broken.

I so wanted to be your little girl. I don’t quite understand what has happened. I was so excited when I began realizing my existence. I was in a dark, yet comfortable place. I saw I had fingers and toes. I was pretty far along in my developing, yet not near ready to leave my surroundings. I spent most of my time thinking or sleeping.

Even from my earliest days, I felt a special bonding between you and me. Sometimes I heard you crying and I cried with you. Sometimes you would yell or scream, then cry. I heard Daddy yelling back. I was sad, and hoped you would be better soon.

I wondered why you cried so much. One day you cried almost all of the day. I hurt for you. I couldn’t imagine why you were so unhappy.

That same day, the most horrible thing happened. A very mean monster came into that warm, comfortable place I was in. I was so scared, I began screaming, but you never once tried to help me. Maybe you never heard me.

The monster got closer and closer as I was screaming and screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, help me please; Mommy, help me.” Complete terror is all I felt. I screamed and screamed until I thought I couldn’t anymore. Then the monster started ripping my arms off.

It hurt so bad; the pain I can never explain. It didn’t stop. Oh, how I begged it to stop. I screamed in horror as it ripped my leg off. Though I was in such complete pain, I was dying.

I knew I would never see your face or hear you say how much you love me. I wanted to make all your tears go away. I had so many plans to make you happy. Now I couldn’t; all my dreams were shattered.

Though I was in utter pain and horror, I felt the pain of my heart breaking, above all. I wanted more than anything to be your daughter. No use now, for I was dying a painful death. I could only imagine the terrible things that they had done to you. I wanted to tell you that I love you before I was gone, but I didn’t know the words you could understand.

And soon, I no longer had the breath to say them; I was dead. I felt myself rising. I was being carried by a huge angel into a big beautiful place. I was still crying, but the physical pain was gone.

The angel took me to Jesus and set me on His lap. He said He loved me, and He was my Father. Then I was happy. I asked Him what the thing was that killed me. He answered, “Abortion. I am sorry, my child; for I know how it feels.” I don’t know what abortion is; I guess that’s the name of the monster.

I’m writing to say that I love you and to tell you how much I wanted to be your little girl. I tried very hard to live. I wanted to live. I had the will, but I couldn’t; the monster was too powerful. It sucked my arms and legs off and finally got all of me. It was impossible to live. I just wanted you to know I tried to stay with you. I didn’t want to die.

Also, Mommy, please watch out for that abortion monster. Mommy, I love you and I would hate for you to go through the kind of pain I did.

Please be careful.

Love,
Your Baby Girl”

I’ve always thought that abortion is the easiest way out(sounds like suicide doesn’t it?) as RM700+ is all it takes to prevent your world from falling apart.But the more I think about it, it is your own flesh and blood. To have a child of your own dying before his time is already heartbreaking enough, but to pursue his death? My no qualms attitude towards abortion comes from my lack of religion.

I’ve always turned to science and logic for all my questions. Logic states that if I have a child before I’m done with university, I will not be able to provide for him and as a result, screw up my own life and not be able to provide for my consequent children in the future. Always place yourself in the worst possible scenario, pretend that the boyfriend doesn’t want to take responsibility, imagine that your parents have disowned you. Then you’ll get scared. Or at the very least, feel prepared for such a situation.

The way I would perceive abortion is how I deal with spending too much money. I just black out the memory. (I have not dared to add up the amount I’ve spent on eBay thus far.) Killing a fetus? No problem, just don’t think about it.

I’m not proud to tell the world that I have such a skewed mentality but wouldn’t it be selfish to bring a child into this world to let him suffer with you? The smaller age gap might be somewhat attractive and you and your child can be the best of friends and all, but won’t your heart break when you realize that you don’t have enough money for milk and diapers?

Thinking of money for milk and diapers is enough to scare me. When I’m older than 27 years old, then only will my monthly budget be able to accommodate milk and diapers. And toys, cots, pacifiers, nappy rash cream and etc.

That being said, if I were to become a mother right after uni, things wouldn’t be so bad. The degree is already there. Oh why oh why is a degree so important, that one thing that limits you from everything before the everything.

Are parents equally heart broken when their working daughters fall pregnant before marriage as they do when their daughters get pregnant while pursuing their studies? Do all girls have to stay at home and be a mother once they deliver their child? Can’t anybody else help them with the baby while they go about completing their goals? I would think that most girls have a family to begin with. A mother who can help them out or maybe even a mother-in-law. An Aunt would do as well. Even our generation! How many of you were raised by your grandparents? I was!

In my blog hopping journey, I came across something different. A married couple who chose to have children at the right age and at the right time, don’t seem to get what they wish for. It’s not another case of various attempts of trying to get pregnant but a much crueler fate than that. In three years, they lost three babies. The first one died in 2004. I’ve no idea how but the second and third children were twins. The son came out earlier as a stillborn and according to the blog, his tiny head got dislodged in the uterus. The daughter continued to live and grow in the womb only to give rise to complications when she was almost reaching full-term. The little girl only stayed in our world for 36 hours. I was sobbing like nobody’s business as I scanned through the blog. Photos of the tiny baby stuck with tubes and other medical instruments, photos of the baby in the casket..photos of those tiny bones. Oh god.. I think this one I can provide you guys with a link to.

To know that your world could’ve been filled with three children yet have them all taken away from you would be too much for any parent to bear. In one post, the father wrote, “I saw a little girl who nearly got banged down by a car only to be pulled back by her slightly older brother. At the side of the road was her father, nonchalantly lighting up a cigarette. These people are blessed with children yet they treat them this way.”

In another post, the couple mentioned that they cannot go through with this all over again. All they want is a child and if adoption will fill this void, then adoption it shall be. They want to provide an unwanted child with all the love in the world, the love that they have reserved for their three children in heaven.

Funny, don’t you think? The thing you cherish the most at one point in your life can destroy you in another.

Sigh, motherhood. Can’t wait for it, don’t want it to come. 🙂