Born in 2020 series

Pregnant and Afraid

September has been set globally as a Suicide Awareness Month. This has been so important in addressing Teen Mental Health especially pregnant teens and teen mums. A teen mum shared her thoughts recently and gave us an insight into her struggles coming to teems with her pregnancy and the thoughts that ran through her mind…..

I remember being surrounded by family and friends and yet I was feeling so alone and so abandoned. I remember living in constant fear that my parents and my siblings were going to find out about my pregnancy.

To my parents and everyone else around, I was the ideal daughter, obedient and respectful. Now that I was pregnant, how were my parents going to react and feel about me being pregnant? What would be society say, what of my siblings and would they be judged because of my actions?

These are all questions that went through my mind as I tried dealing with the fact that I was pregnant. How could I have been so stupid to get pregnant? Does stupidity have anything to do with it? How did I even get pregnant? I just did it once, how did it happen?

There I was pregnant alone and afraid, who should I tell? We were never taught anything related to sex at home, and now am pregnant. Will my siblings judge me , how would they even react to the fact that I am pregnant? How would I even begin to tell them that I am pregnant?

A few thoughts came to mind. Should I abort? But if I do , wont I hurt myself in the process? I thought of running away. Then I thought that I have no skill, I just completed my O levels how will I make a living? The thought of killing myself even came to my mind. My parents were going to kill me anyway, they wouldn’t kill me twice, I might as well beat them to it.