Pip-Life

Teen mom aka when I was 18 I fell in love and got pregnant

August 14, 2019

When I was 18 I fell in love and got pregnant.

I suppose I was meant to be horrified, but really the idea of having a little family loomed large and seems like a good idea. I had left my own family to be a grown-up in a whole other city and starting again seemed like the best antidote for the lonely, adrift life I found myself in the midst of. 

Rin was born a few weeks before I turned 19. Learning to love and be a mum to her felt natural and much easier than learning to be in a proper adult relationship with a baby at such a young age.

The relationship only lasted another three years but the gratitude to and big feelings for Rin have lasted a life time.

Rin was a clever, cute and very doted-upon wee girl, with a huge extended family that fought over cuddling her and spending time with her, a perfect situation for a just-learning and young mum.

She’s actually even more clever now than she was back then which is saying something because she was SHARP!

Max was born next, eight years later into a whole other life. He arrived in 1996 a sort of upside down and back-to front version of my own 1969 birth year. He was a thoughtful, bright-eyed, clever little possum. Very curious and with a passionate eye for right and wrong, with all of the above enduring to this very day.

Ari was the lucky last, born in 2000 as a new millennium dawned, a curly-haired little bug full of naughtiness, quips and sweetness. Not a thing passed him by and he has carried this humour and all-seeing sixth sense into his adult life.

Now they are all grown-up and have slipped out of my house in that very same order they came in, at various stages of their late teens and early twenties. Sometimes they come back for a while and sometimes they don’t. 

There’s just one lucky last left now and after having years to consider the idea that one day they’ll all have wandered off to build their own kind of family (just like I did) I think I’m almost getting used to it.

Their ‘families’ – whatever form they take – are my family too. 

Which makes me think that 18 year old girl really was a natural and actually DID know what she was doing, all those years ago. Despite how it may have seemed.

x pip

 

PS – how about your family?

PPS – sorry kids.

6 Comments

  • Reply Lauraine August 21, 2019 at 2:12 AM

    Hi Pip,
    I read your blog regularly, but have never commented before.
    So…greetings and thank you from a 52 year reader from Phoenix AZ,
    who was also a happy teenaged mom many moons ago.??

  • Reply Lauren Blakeney August 17, 2019 at 10:26 PM

    Oh I love this. It’s amazing how we learn so much about ourselves – our strengths and capabilities – with the “simple” act of growing, birthing and raising a human.
    My family started 10 days after my 21st, and that relationship ended also after 3 years, just a month after having my second. Since then it’s been me and my girls and I have loved (almost) every 1,594 days. But soon 3 will become 6 when I marry my fiance, and his sons become a part of our family too. I am very much looking forward to the next chapter, but will miss the days of baking and dancing to Aba on my bed with my girls.
    Ah family – there’s nothing quite like it.

  • Reply Jan August 15, 2019 at 12:02 PM

    I’m sure it wasn’t easy – but it all sounds so darn romantic!

  • Reply Reannon August 14, 2019 at 11:08 PM

    Oh Pip, this is a gorgeous ode to your life as a Mum & to your crew.
    I have so many feelings about being a young mum, mostly that I think it was right for me (& Tim too) but when I look at 20 year olds now I think “ go live some life before you settle down”. And that’s not because I regret how my life panned out, not at all but I know it hasn’t been easy. We seemed to do everything ass about tit & at times I still feel like I’m trying to catch up to everyone else who took a more traditional path in life.
    Regardless, I’m not ready for my kids to fly the newt just yet but even if the bigger ones do decide to leave soon we’ve got the little ones to keep us company for a good long while yet.
    I always knew I was destined to be a Mum, and a young one at that, but never did I think it would like this. So much love. So much heartache. So much laughter. So much yelling!! My kids are my life & I feel so lucky that I get to be a part of theirs 🙂

  • Reply Kate August 14, 2019 at 10:36 PM

    Oh, Pip. You are astonishingly excellent.
    You post stuff that always ALWAYS resonates with me. Thank you.

  • Reply Donna Bridges August 14, 2019 at 6:39 PM

    I was a single mum at 21 the first of my friends going bravely where none had yet been – alone . My eldest has been a wild gypsy child from the beginning and was a lot of work – loved for sure but a challenge. She was a mum at 15 and is about to have her fifth at 29 none of her other children live with her. It’s been no bed of Roses and I care for the first two full time . The second is a calm child , completely opposite and currently studying to be an art historian and anthropologist. She’s going to live in Italy and work next year .
    I don’t regret my choices because you know love ? but it hasn’t been easy

  • Leave a Reply