[J_9]

For all you teens that want babies

Let me fill you in on some of the issues with girls who get pregnant at your age:

1) Gestational Diabetes. Do you know what diabetes is? It's when your body can't control its sugar levels. Now, gestational diabetes may end up being permanent, or it may go away after the baby is born. Most likely you will have to prick your finger several times a day to test your blood. If your blood sugar is too high you will either have to take a pill several times a day OR you will have to give yourself a shot in the stomach several times a day.

2. Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. That means that your body cannot control it's blood pressure. This puts girls your age at risk for seizure disorder. Most of the time that goes away after you deliver the baby, but you will have to have a C-Section to get the baby out. Do you know what a C-Section is?

3. Premature labor. Girls your age generally are not able to carry their babies to full term. Why you ask? Because your body is not done growing itself and it doesn't know how to grow you AND a baby. Your not done growing yet. Not all of your bones and muscles are formed well enough to carry a baby long enough for it to be healthy when it is born.

4. Maternal and/or fetal death. Again this comes back to you being too young to carry a baby to term. I have had to tell parents that their 15 year old daughter died in labor. I have had to tell 14 year old mothers that their babies have died. Other babies live in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) for months and months before they are ready to go home. The last one I had lived in the hospital for the first 6 months of his life. Most of these babies come home with defects such as mental retardation or cerebral palsy, just to name two.

Now, are you prepared to take care of a mentally or physically handicapped baby? Can you afford the bills that come with a healthy baby? Can you afford the bills that come with a sick baby?

I am not giving you personal advice, but professional information.

Babies don't love you unconditionally. Babies don't know how to love. They are selfish to the core. They rely on you for everything and if you aren't up to task they can become very sick or die.

You may want to re-think this.