The saddest part of my daughter getting pregnant was that she did not come to us first. I know she didn't want to dissappoint us but it is not like we haven't dealt with other mishaps in her growing stages. In not wanting to hurt us she hurt us even more by not trusting us. She was worried about her father being upset and the rest of the family thinking she was a failure and none of those ideas are real. As my husband says she has been watching way too much bad tv and not remembering who her family really is. We will stand by her in this as we have everything else in her life. I can only hope that she doesn't regret this child and that she does not give up on her dreams of college. That would be the saddest thing I can see happening and we will do whatever it takes to see that she has the support she needs to complete her dreams rather than giving up on them. A baby I can live with but her giving up hope I can't. At least now I have an excuse to shop in the toy department again and to buy fun toys.

Children are great joys but having them to early is hard hard work. I became pregnant with my son at 15, I had all the usual excuses divorced parents, disfunctional family life and I still survived and prospered. Now I am not sure whether that was a good example or a bad one. In some ways I think I made it look too easy but she doesn't realize all the things I gave up to raise children properly. I tried telling her while she was growing up, stressing how important it was to have a life of her own before she settled down to marriage and children. Of all the things I missed becoming a parent at 16, never having a chance to find out who I really was is what I miss most. Once you have children and a husband you live for them, at least if you are doing it right and God knows I tried to do it right. I have a happy marriage, my husband and I both gave up good jobs and started our own businesses so that we could homeschool and give our kids the time they needed from us. Its like Julia Roberts in Runaway bride where she doesn't know how she really likes her eggs. Unless you take time to live on your own and become a real person you wake up at 35 and realize you don't know anything about yourself. You know what things your kids and husbands like but you have spent so much time catering to other people you have no idea what you like or want from life and after 18 years or raising a child most of the time you are too tired to really care.