Here & there: 18, pregnant with few choices

Woman unsure of what to do. location unknown, March 2, 2021 | Photo by Sophie Thompson via Scopio, St. George News

ST. GEORGE —Eighteen. Unmarried. Scared. Alone. And pregnant. My sister was all these things. And none of us knew it.

Woman thinking, Location unknown, July 18, 2018 | Photo by Anika Huizinga via Scopio, St. George News

Not until she’d sat with it in the in-between – between her realizing she was pregnant with a child of a man with whom she had no future and knowing what she was going to do about it – for several weeks.

Not until she’d sat in the shame. Not until she’d sat in the regret. Not until she’d sat in the fear and the disappointment and the endless self-castigations.

What if she’d been smarter?

What if she’d been better or stronger or more pure?

What if she’d felt less lonely and more worthy of love? What if she hadn’t felt broken? And what if she’d felt like enough?

Her friends knew about the pregnancy during the in between. They counseled her to find a solution where she’d never have to tell our parents or her family about it. They weren’t being malicious; they thought they were simply being pragmatic.

She thought about it. That option. She really did. She thought about it during the shame. She thought about it during the regret. She thought about it while sitting in the fear and the disappointment and the endless self-castigations.

She even had an appointment – made by a friend’s mom – that she didn’t keep.

She didn’t keep the baby, either. She understood that she was in no way prepared to care for and provide for this child.

Instead, my sister moved up to Utah, lived with strangers who fostered pregnant teens, worked long hours at a minimum wage job, and she carried that baby boy who wouldn’t be hers for nine long months.

She carried him through the morning sickness. She carried him through the migraines. She carried him through the chill of the spring and the heat of the summer. She carried him through the shame that still sometimes crept in as she tried to sleep in the unfamiliar bedroom of the kind couple who fostered pregnant teens.

She birthed that baby boy on a crisp September day virtually all by herself.

Another sister and I were her lone attendants as our mom and aunt had gotten lost on the way from the airport to the hospital and the doctor had misjudged the timing of the birth.

Afterwards, her body still soft, squishy and aching, she cuddled that baby boy while a nurse bound her breasts so her milk wouldn’t come in.

Baby in onesie, location unknown, Dec. 3, 2019 | Photo by Nikki Watts via Scopio, St. George News

Two days later, she gave him up. To a loving couple eager for a child of their own. A couple whom she chose from among hundreds.

And then she collapsed on the floor. Heartbroken again.

When she called the birth father from a small windowless room at the LDS Social Services building just before the exchange was to take place, he castigated her for giving up his child. It was the first time they’d spoken since she told him she was pregnant, and he ghosted her.

The days and months that followed weren’t exactly easy. Her body was not the same. Her hormones were not the same. She was not the same.

She grieved for the baby boy she’d grown for nine months and now was without. She grieved for the girl she’d once been and the pain she’d put herself through.

And she struggled to re-create her life anew back home, where she was considered both brave and wholly unworthy to date anyone’s son.

But through those days and months and even years of struggle, she knew something. Something that helped shape her into the strong, empathetic, confidant, loving woman she is today; she knew she had done something big and beautiful, and ridiculously hard. And she’d chosen it for herself from a seemingly pragmatic alternative.

Today, I think about that girl – my sister who was pregnant, unmarried, scared and alone – and I wonder if she would be the same woman today if she hadn’t had the choice.

Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News. Any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News staff or management.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

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