Mariah and Alex, just after his 4th birthday late February 2012
February 20, 2008 is a day I will never forget. I was woken up by the sound of the door of the hospital room being knocked on and opened without our answer, and wheels squeaking across the floor as a cart with a clear plastic tub containing a bundled up infant glided our way, nurse propelled. “He’s hungry,” She said as my labor tested then fiance stirred next to me.Soon he was in our arms, a strangely colored little monkey getting his breakfast from Mariah. We signed the birth certificate not long after that. Mother’s name/ age- Mariah Saul Becksted- 16, and Father- David Alex Powell-18. Welcome to parenthood, kids!
The baby shower, Mariah was only a month form her due date. So big!
Since then we’ve become a family, but it was a long and difficult process, and our choice to raise our unplanned child as a family was sometimes difficult to live with. It has taken all my attention until now to balance providing for my family and taking care of them. I never stopped to wonder how the time between getting a positive pregnancy test and having Alex affected my wife because she has recovered gracefully and she’s functioning fine. Mariah was a very bouncy girl in high school. She was always energetic and skipping around, very bubbly. She was always smiling and enjoyed my stupid jokes. We only lived a few miles from each other out in the country and she would pretend to miss the bus so that I would have to drive her home. We spent so much time together, and we were teenagers. It was romance. Then in June of 2007 she found out she was pregnant and we were going to have a baby together. We were pushed into an engagement and my parents pressured me harder to do better at school and work harder to take over their business, so I didn’t get to be around Mariah except for once or twice a week after she dropped out of high school, got her GED, and started going to community college. Finally I got to ask her some very meaningful questions about that life changing period of her life and I want to share it with you because teen pregnancy is tough and you need to understand how important it is to make the right decisions when you’re young, even though it’s hard.
I think this was only a few months before Mariah became pregnant
It’s difficult to make completely sober and rational decisions all the time as a teenager. So much is riding on your shoulders, like your grades, your chores, your job, and your clubs and teams, so when it comes to your social life and potentially budding romantic life, you just don’t want to be restricted so much. It’s easy to get carried away with young love and forget that sex is more than fun, but it’s nature’s way of getting you to make babies. According to 10 Teen Pregnancy Facts from About.com, %82 of teen pregnancies were unplanned (Linda Lowen, 10 Teen Pregnancy Facts). Those girls were probably just trying to “live while they’re young”, but failed to take measures against the consequences. It’s not a big secret how pregnancies happen. Mariah Powell,once a teen mother herself, warns, “…You’re experiencing a rush of biological and emotional reactions, you need to prevent pregnancy before it gets too hot. Sex is awesome and beautiful. So is fire. Both must be respected and handled with care or you’re going to have an accident (Powell,Mariah).”
It was the summer of 2007, right after my Junior year of high school and Mariah’s Sophomore year, that we conceived our son. At that point in time, our parents had freshly discovered that we were sexually active with each other, so we were in trouble and under very close supervision. Mariah also was working as a waitress at a coffee shop, and her boss was not a very nice guy. She was very stressed at that point in time, and she told me she thought the nausea and headaches were from all the pressure. I didn’t know until afterwards that she was going to go to a clinic, “just to check and assure myself I wasn’t pregnant,” as she says. She describes what happened that day:
“At first, I didn’t believe it. When I went to the clinic, the young lady there was very vague about how to use the pregnancy test…” She describes how the volunteer brought her to a room in the back and started talking to her. “I really don’t remember much because I was so nervous, I just wanted to know what the results were first before anything else. She finally looked down at the test and said, ‘Ok so this looks positive, so…’ and she kept rambling on, just like that! She spoke so quickly but I was still trying to remember what she said. Positive? Wait, I’m pregnant? Whoa, back up! Are you sure? So the first moment I definitely felt disbelief, bewilderment, I really felt like I had been placed in an alternate dimension because my reality was effectively reconfigured.”
Being told you’re pregnant isn’t easy. Mariah felt like her world was turned upside down. She had some serious things to think about when faced with pregnancy. What do you do? Pregnancy is hard to grasp mentally. Coming to grips with it is is one thing, but it will not wait for your permission go on ahead.
“I knew I had to tell you because as the father I felt like you should have some input and maybe have an idea about what to do. I had no idea how I was going to tell my parents, though. I never like the idea of abortion, so it didn’t cross my mind to terminate the pregnancy but I was still grappling with reality. I wasn’t convinced that I was pregnant. I mean, all the rational proof was there, it just wasn’t registering and I couldn’t see myself as a mother or as a person entirely responsible for the life of a vulnerable little person.”
There are generally three options a young pregnant girl can make: becoming a mom, getting an abortion,and giving up the child for adoption. %57 of teen pregnancies end in live birth, and another 14% end in miscarriage (Lowen, Linda). Granted that you don’t lose the baby, you need to calmly figure out what is the best decision for yourself and the child. I asked my wife why she didn’t choose abortion or adoption, and she describes how she made her decision. “I think abortion has its place in the most unfortunate and dire situations, but that it shouldn’t be so lax. That being said, I’ve always respected life. It’s such a miracle to me[….]So abortion was never considered. Adoption, I maybe should have thought about more,” she goes on to say that adoption should have been considered just as much as abstinence for the best, and “These may have been smarter decisions. But I was in love, and I felt like I could handle becoming a Mommy with grace. Apply thoughts on destiny and fate here, I can’t imagine life any other way now that I’m Alex’s Mom and we’re a family. I’m very proud of all of us. It was indescribably hard, though”.
Only hours after we brought our son into the world, the morning of February 20, 2008
I, as the father and husband in this particular situation, want to add here that even though Mariah says it’s destiny and how proud she is that we turned out ok, it was a long and rough road to get to where we are now. When we decided to keep Alex and become a family, it was gamble that we’d actually make it this far. I asked Mariah what she thought the hardest part was about being pregnant when she was 16, and surprisingly she didn’t say anything about her body, the baby growing in her, or how people reacted to her, but she said this about us, “I thought that since we were having a baby together that all our high school relationship problems would just evaporate. I soon discovered that just because you can validate your sexual maturity by proving you can make a baby doesn’t mean you’re mature. It was hard for both of us to adjust, I thought you would immediately metamorphasize into an awesome Daddy/ family man and make everything ok because that’s what the family man and Daddy does but you were still a teenage boy.I was no better. My world used to hinge on how you looked at me that day, and if I felt any less than treasured I would collapse into this dramatic, stressful, depressing state […] pregnancy and engagement did not automatically fix all our little problems. So being pregnant and still experiencing the same dumb boyfriend drama was very heartbreaking.” Teen marriage does not fix teen girlfriend/ boyfriend problems.
On that note, if marriage itself isn’t hard enough, try being married as a teen, when you haven’t had time to mature or be yourself before you’re committed to someone else. Actually, among many statistics that we’ve beaten, this is one- 90% of teens who get married will be divorced in 6 years (“Marriage”, Pregnancy Outreach). Now, we’re only approaching our 5th anniversary but since we’ve been married we’ve encountered many other problems which would have done us in (joining the military, major financial debt, in law issues, etc.), and now we’re stronger than ever. I am NOT saying it’s a decision every expecting teenage couple should make. Just the opposite. It was very hard, and we’re only where we are now do to extensive marriage therapy with the shrink and because we’ve stuck out countless fights where we were throwing around the “D” word- divorce. The pride and sense of satisfaction Mariah describes above is most likely because we’ve come through and our family is in good shape, despite all the bruises.
We were just kids… Look at that tiny little guy in our arms!
Teenage parenthood and marriage are not recommendable. The best solution, as always, is prevention. So what happens that raises chances a girl will become pregnant, besides the obvious? “I think what led to my pregnancy besides the obvious was that I didn’t have an honest ground upon which to discuss it with adults I trusted and sex education wasn’t very realistic at our school,” reflects Mariah, “I was originally sold on the whole Abstinence idea… before my hormones kicked in and before I got mixed up with sly young David Powell! […] I wanted to talk to my parents about it, they lied and said they waited until they were married. I never got the sex talk, really. It was just the school abstinence program which spouted, “DON’T DO IT! You WILL get an STD! Or Pregnant! Or broken hearted! Or a combination of any of those!”. I was smart enough to request birth control at my first OBGYN appointment, because that’s when we started dating.I told the doctor it was because I wanted lighter periods[…] I didn’t HAVE to lie, of course but I felt like there would be major consequences if I actually opened up, told the truth, and sought real solutions to my early sexuality.” So, for the first 8 months of our high school romance, Mariah and I were protected form pregnancy.
Oh my God, this is my son… I was 18.
We were living in Northern New Mexico, the 4th state from the top of a list for most teen pregnancies (Lowen, Top 10 States with Highest Teenage Birth Rates). Mariah comments, “I’m not surprised. Our area of New Mexico was a small town with not a lot of things for stupid teenagers to be busy with. On top of that, the area is pretty conservative. Most the industry around there is all oil and gas and farming. I’m not saying there’s anything at all wrong with any of that, but the conservative view on teenagers and sex seems to be pretty authoritarian “just say no and don’t ask questions” and teenagers are wild and somewhat rebellious by nature. Add in a little boredom and a lot of hormones plus lack of proper realistic sex education and you get lots of teen pregnancies.”
If lack of realistic sex education is to blame for thousands of teen pregnancies a year, then you may think you are not responsible for unplanned pregnancies. Wrong. If your education system will not help you avoid getting pregnant when you’re 16, you need to take care of yourself. “Be strong. In a situation where no one will be open and realistic to you about sex and pregnancy, you must fend for yourself. You MUST seek out the information and proactively defend your potential to become whatever you want to be by making the right decisions NOW.”
My amazing wife, Mariah Saul Powell, this Spring
In closing, I just want to take a moment to thank my wife for being so strong for all of this. She has stabilized our family for our little guy since day 1, and has always fought for our unity. If you are a teenager faced with unplanned parenthood, you need to know that there are options out there and you don’t need to take on adulthood (because that’s what you will do, by claiming responsibility for a family). Keep a level head and make the best decision you can for the baby and yourselves. When I asked Mariah what she would have to say to confused and expecting teens, she had this to say: “The decision you make now is going to forever change you and the child. Are you the best thing for that baby? Adoption is so underrated. So many couples who can’t conceive want infants so they can be Mommies and Daddies from day 1, and your mistake is their blessing. And you can insist on an open adoption, where you get to know your child even as he’s being raised by someone who is in a much better position to promote his life. Be realistic. What will your child’s life be like if he’s raised by you?” Having a child and a family is the hardest decision to follow through with.you really need to be able to surrender your youth and turn into what your friends might call a wet blanket overnight so that you are not distracted from taking care of your family by young behaviors like parties, spontaneous movie nights and adventures. Do what you can to live while you’re young. Having a family can wait.
The Powell family, after the dust finally settled last Spring, 2012
Works Cited
Lowen, Linda. “10 Teen Pregnancy Facts- Rates and Statistics in the US: Most Teen Pregnancies are Unplanned.” About.com. Web. 4 February 2013. http://womensissues.about.com/od/datingandsex/tp/Teenpregancy.htm
Powell, Mariah. “Re: pregnancy questions.” Message to the Author. 4 February, 2013.
“Marriage”. Pregnancy Outreach. Webpage. 4 February 2013. http://www.pregnancyoutreach.org/articles/marriage
Lowen, Linda. “ Top 10 States With Highest Teenage Pregnancy and Birth Rates: More Teens Become Pregnant, Give Birth in These States.” About.com. Web. 4 February 2013. http://womensissues.about.com/od/datingandsex/a/TeenPregStates.htm
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