what should i expect as teen mum

[mariaflower22]

hi i am 16 and i really want to have a baby with my boyfriend i know it is young but i feel ready and can imagine my life with one , i missed my period last month and while i was kind of scared i realised i was so excited but then it came after being a week late and i felt disappointed , i had been thinking about the future with the baby and being pregnant and realised that's what i want , so what should i expect during pregnancy and after the baby is here as obviously being a teenager will make things harder with some things ?

I waited until I was older to have children but I have a few family members who had children as teenagers.

I think the big differences are money. The teenage mums I know still don’t have a lot of money even when their children are teenagers. It’s definitely more of a struggle to achieve your dreams if you wanted to go into further education etc.

I have a family member that is jealous we can go to the zoo and afford holidays but we made different life choices. We waited to give our children a different life style.

I don’t think having a baby is any different at each age, both have sleepless nights, dirty nappies etc. But I do think the younger you have children the less financially settled and might have more money worries or concerns.

If it’s really what you want I would do some sums on how much everything cost, your boyfriends salary and what you can afford etc and if you would be happy with that lifestyle.

If you want the best future for your child, and you should, then work on developing the best future for yourself, so get a good education, develop a career, experience life as an adult and you will be a better parent for it.
How can you advise and support a child with things you've never had to deal with yoyrself? They aren't babies forever and while it can be lovely looking at the tiny clothes and prams etc. babies are hard work. Plus there are no guarantees that you would have a healthy child, could you cope with a child with a disability or life threatening illness? Those things don't always happen to other people, it could happen to you, and you need a great deal of resilience to cope, at sixteen it would be practically impossible. While nearly all parents rely on support from their own families, it is unfair to have a child if the burden falls mostly on other people too.

I am the daughter of a teenage mother. She was 17 when she had me.

Whilst she is now a successful business owner, everything was way, way harder than it could have been. Education, housing, jobs, career, relationships...basically all the stuff you spend your late teens and early 20's doing all had an added complication.

I was never made to feel like a complicated btw, just on reflection I can see how much harder it was for her.

If you really want a baby young maybe spend the next few years finishing school, getting a job with maternity pay, (and you BF doing the same) and setting up a home so you have some stability and prospects to bring a child into. Work towards it.

Do you really want to be tied to your boyfriend, through the baby for the rest of your life. You may stay together, but more likely not.

Planning a baby at 16 is selfish and cruel to your baby and your parents. You are 16. Are you working full time? have you savings to buy baby things ? Are you prepared to be cut below during the birth. The midwife might have to. When your child goes to school at 4 are you going to work in tescos? You won't be attractive to employers because you won't have had a job will you? And you'll be 20. Can you take baby to baby groups (have you got money) can you afford £10pw on formula if you struggle to breastfeed? Don't destroy your life. Go travelling, learn - be interesting to people and you'll inspire your children in the future

Are you and your boyfriend in a position of financial security? By that I mean do you both work, rent or own your own home? Have money for bills? Savings aside each month for when the boiler packs up?

You likely have 25 years of fertility ahead of you - plenty of time to think about those things.

Get a good education, go travelling because you won't be able to do those things with a baby.

Without sounding patronising, a baby is more work than you ever imagine and that's true if you are 16, 26, 36 and beyond. I'm in my mid 30s and dizzy from exhaustion and sleep deprivation because my 7 month old won't sleep at the moment.

Babies are hugely costly. Formula if you need it can be at least £20 per week, if you have a baby that has reflux so needs lots of clothing changes you'll be spending a good £50 every 3 months on vests and sleepsuits alone. Not to mention t-shirts, trousers etc. Toys, baby groups to meet other mums, antenatal courses to build mum friendships are hundreds of pounds.

You should expect everything a mum of any age should expect. Lots of those things are lovely but a lot of them suck. If you want to be a parent at a young age, then that is actually, in terms of nature and biology, how it was intended. I don't see it as an illegitimate choice. But you need to be prepared for the realities of motherhood, and once the baby is out, Mother Nature is no longer on our side, unfortunately...

Your body is going to look very different. Bodies don't usually just bounce back into shape. You might have tiger stripes that stay for years (mine go down across my pubic area). You might have new moles appear. You will need to say goodbye to skinny jeans or skinny anything for a while.

You can say goodbye to late nights out and lay ins. Expect to be woken regularly in the night. Even once they are sleeping through the night, expect to be woken at 6 or 7 am on weekends to make breakfast and watch peppa pig.

Your home will be full of children's stuff. Usually lying around everywhere. If you like a tidy home, prepare to tidy up 5 times a day.

Your home might get infested with silverfish or ants, because kids leave little crumbs everywhere. Or you need to spend a lot of time and energy instilling a super strict mealtime routine.

Rainy Saturdays are still spent outside on a cold wet park bench while your kid burns some energy at the playground. Or you spend it in a loud sweaty soft play paying extortionate rates for crappy coffee. The only other alternative is a trashed house and hours of tidying.

Prepare for friends with no children to slowly drift away from you. They will be replaced by other mum friends. They will hopefully be lovely, but maybe not your usual first choice. They just go to the same playground as you do.

Your relationship will fall under immense strain. Arguments arise due to lack of freedom/sleep. If you aren't on the same page about every aspect of parenting (almost impossible) you will have struggles about which way things like discipline, routine, money, affection, etc. should be done.

You will have this lovely new human. Initially they smell AMAZING and want cuddles all the time. When they reach toddler age they just smell of sick and poo. You will spend less time cuddling and more time chasing them around so you can get them dressed.

You will get a lot of judgment. Likely more so because you are a young mum, but not the only reason. Becoming a mum just opens a door to criticism and know-it-alls. Whatever you decision you make, someone will stroll along and tell you that you are doing it wrong.

Everything: money, holidays, furniture, sex life, food, routines, social life, entertainment etc will revolve around the child. You can say right now it won't be like that. But eventually it just happens because you realize anything you do that isn't in the best interest of your child backfires.

That's just a bit of reality as I've been woken up at 6am on Saturday morning, emptied the silverfish traps, chopped up a watermelon in small toddler sized triangles, peppa pig on in the background, saggy skin hanging over my pj bottoms, and wondering which playground we can go to once I've spent hours negotiating with my dd to get dressed.

I love her to bits, but at 16 I was happier doing so many other things.

It’s the loneliest thing you’ll ever do.
When your peers (or ex peers most likely) start having babies you’ll be jealous.

Trust me.

If I had to go back again and do it the loneliness would put me off before anything else. And I was much older than you (still a teen though).

How are you going to support your baby financially? How will you afford a home to keep it in, pay the rent, bills, council tax, feed and clothe a growinng child?
What work skills do you have, what kind of job could your get? Do you have the faintest clue how much it costs to run your own home?

You haven't mentioned where you're going to live, and how you're going to be financially supported. That's what is very wrong with this post.

@Twosharks

It’s the loneliest thing you’ll ever do. When your peers (or ex peers most likely) start having babies you’ll be jealous.

Trust me.

If I had to go back again and do it the loneliness would put me off before anything else. And I was much older than you (still a teen though).

Yes this! Mines a teenager now and I'm watching all my friends with babies enjoying proper mat leave, husbands with good jobs, cleaners, two cars etc. Raise their children with a lot more ease than I had to!

I'm not convinced this is a real post because surely nobody could be so naive as to PLAN a pregnancy at 16... But on the off chance that it is, please think of your parents. It's not their responsibility, or the taxpayers', to support you with finances or childcare. If you're going to deliberately bring a baby into the world you need to be able to look after it yourself (you and the father). Please take on board the advice here about getting a stable job, home and savings in place before even thinking about it.

It's really hard being a teen mum. And I was 20 when my first baby was born so I wasn't even that young.

It's isolating as all your friends are going off doing things that you can't do - even if you don't have many friends or think you don't want to do those things. And they all say they are interested in the baby but in reality they get bored pretty quickly or don't understand the way you need to organise your life, so they get fed up with you not being available at a minute's notice or not being able to stay out all night or needing baby-friendly venues or somewhere you can get to with a buggy. They just don't get it and it's too hard for them to think around your needs, as none of their other friends have those needs - you're the odd one out.

It makes it really difficult to study and get started in a career. I didn't know what I wanted to do at 19 except for have a baby, so I didn't think this mattered very much, but now I'm in my 30s I wish I'd got some education just to start me out that I could have built on later. Even if I'd just delayed having kids until my early 20s this would have been better. To get some work experience or education really - either one is fine.

It can be difficult seeing other parents buy their kids all sorts of things that you can't really afford. I am not talking designer clothes etc as I never cared about things like that. I wasn't bothered about a £1000 pram either, but it was a bit depressing sometimes being restricted to the most basic items or second hand. I have enjoyed buying things second hand and bargain hunting too, but sometimes it gets tiring and you can't always do nice things like days out, holidays etc.

Also life goals like getting a driving licence or buying a house become really difficult. I still can't drive, because first I had no money for lessons. I also had nobody to look after DC even if I did have money for lessons. You can't take a baby in a car seat on a driving lesson with you and I wouldn't have wanted to in case I crashed! I haven't been able to save up for a deposit on a house and even if I did, I would need a 3-4 bedroom house now, which is much more expensive than a small one for one/two people. Cost of living is higher because you need more space, you need to live somewhere you can get a buggy onto a bus, you have higher bills due to this little one. If you work you need to pay for childcare. And childcare restrictions mean the types of work you can do is restricted as well - it needs to be set hours, office type hours, and enough to cover the cost of childcare, which is hard when you're young and inexperienced, meaning you often don't work when children are little and then by the time they are at school you're really far behind everyone else and it's harder to get any job.

It's isolating being a mum in general - I had DC at 20 and then DC2 at 30 so I have seen the difference. Everything that's set up to help counteract this and help you meet mum friends etc is geared up to or full of mums in their 30s, with degrees and mortgages and partners who have company cars - it's hard not to feel very different from them sometimes and this can make it hard to relate to them, or you sometimes feel like they are judging you or not interested in being friends with you, even if they are kind to your face. Groups set up specifically for teen/young mums have a totally different set of assumptions about you and I never fit in there either.

Health professionals are often (intentionally or not) patronising towards you. You are plagued forever with "Eh???? You're that young?!!!" and comments or assumptions about how you must be the sister/aunt/nanny, which sound like they might be funny but are actually just frustrating when you want/need to be taken seriously as your child's parent.

Lastly the most important thing IME is that your experience/view about relationships changes so much from your mid teens to your 20s and older. It's very rare for people to stay with their boyfriend from when they were 16, and that's not necessarily because they are a bad boyfriend or immature or anything like that, it's just because at 16 you haven't fully settled into the person you will eventually be yet, and it's so so common for that person and the person your boyfriend is now to grow apart. If you have children with someone, you're tied to them forever, which is not necessarily a good thing!

At 16 there are loads of things you haven't had a chance at yet and could miss out on forever if you have a baby now. But a baby will always be a possibility even if you wait just 5 years it could make all the difference.
I bet you've never
Gone on a girls holiday to Ibiza, laughing with your friends for 2 weeks living off pot noodle so you can spend all your money I the clubs
Walked into a shop and blown your weeks wages on a new outfit to wear on Saturday night
Gone to a nightclub
Worked your way through a cocktail menu with friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon
Passed your driving test and set off for the coast, music blasting out
Gone to a music festival
Gone to uni, spent 3 years studying something you love knowing you're working towards an interesting well paid career while making friends with people from all over the UK
Gone on hen nights, spa days and weekends away with friends
Gone on holiday with your boyfriend, having loads of sex and romantic meals
Stayed with your boyfriend through the big changes that happen in your teens and 20s, supporting each other and building a solid foundation before starting a family
Saved up and gone travelling for a year. See America or Europe or Asia. Revel in being young and free.

Life has so much to offer you and you can do as much or as little as you want with it. Just please consider all of the opportunities that are out there before going with this default of becoming a mum because it does set you on a path that limits what else you can do.

You can't imagine your life with a baby. You imagine what you think life will be with a baby and it won't be like that believe me. Don't do it!

I had a baby when I was 17. He's now in his 30s. They are cute babies who you can care for and cuddle for about 18 months and then they are growing children who need your attention 100% of the time..... and then they are adults and they STILL remain in the front of your mind all the time.
It NEVER stops. Don't be too eager to start on this journey. I hope and wish for you a few more years of no one demanding your 100% attention.

Please don't do it. I met my first boyfriend at 16, was desperate for a child in my late teens, but sensibly we went to university instead, split up at 24. Now with DH, 31 and pregnant with first. We have jobs, cars, a home and savings. I am SO glad I am having kids at this life stage. At 16 you do not know what you want in life, you have no life experience, haven't lived as an adult. Ideally, you need to do all of this before having a child. A child isn't a pet. They will be the priority for the rest of your life. They will dictate the rest of your life choices and will cost so much money. You shouldn't even be contemplating children if you don't have a steady income and a home of your own as it isn't responsible to let the state pick up the tab for it. Get your own independence first.

@BertieBotts (do I recognise you from ADHD threads? I’m certain there’s a link between teenage mums and ADHD btw but that’s off topic)

This paragraph:

It's isolating being a mum in general - I had DC at 20 and then DC2 at 30 so I have seen the difference. Everything that's set up to help counteract this and help you meet mum friends etc is geared up to or full of mums in their 30s, with degrees and mortgages and partners who have company cars - it's hard not to feel very different from them sometimes and this can make it hard to relate to them, or you sometimes feel like they are judging you or not interested in being friends with you, even if they are kind to your face. Groups set up specifically for teen/young mums have a totally different set of assumptions about you and I never fit in there either.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a truer word spoken on Mumsnet. Being a teen mum, even an older one, is one of the loneliest things you’ll ever do because even if you are older the mums in their late 20s and beyond just do not want to know you. Like you say they’ll be polite to your face but you won’t be getting the invites that their fellow normal age/older mums get. Even when you hit the school gates and you’re older yourself that age gap is still glaringly obvious and they still judge you because they know full well you had your child 10 years earlier than them. It affects the kids in a way too because their friends DMs all already know each other but you don’t know them.

My husband and I are a teenage parenthood ‘success story’ - we’re married now, we own a house and are about to move to a much bigger one, he’s got a good job and a business, I’m studying and working and we’re ‘ahead of’ many of the other parents at school but we’ll just never quite slot in.

I’d love to have another baby now just to get to experience it properly.

Other things like the school my children go to ... we had to move at one point so we just moved and never really thought about the fact it meant they’d go to the school they go to and I’m perfectly happy with the school but I know 100% an older mum would have considered that at the time even if their child was a baby. Although we are in Scotland where moving for schools is much less of a thing and I only now feel bad about this since joining Mumsnet