The first six months of Ravyn’s journey opened with happiness and hope then crashed hard into the reality of being a teen mother. We encouraged readers not to rule out this young couple just because of the hopelessness and despair described in Ravyn’s First and Second Trimester accounts. They could have aborted the baby but instead they married and determined to bring their child into this world, whatever it took. Ravyn is now one week from her due date. And things are turning around for her and her husband. We have been privileged to get to know them and see their true character and to share Ravyn’s words with our readers.
As I move into the final weeks of my pregnancy, it hits me that this journey has gone by so fast. It feels like only yesterday that I was taking The Test and telling my parents The News. It’s hard to believe the formation of a human being could take so little time.
I have started to notice that as I travel along this road I am growing as a person along with the son growing inside me. God’s loving hand has led me down a very complicated and obstacle-filled path. Despite the difficulties and challenges—maybe because of them—I believe I am becoming better in many ways. In the first part of this story I had written than I had been a horrible person. That person who was is not me anymore.
My son moves around and stretches my belly, running out of room to move. I go in for my thirty-five week appointment and learn he is still sideways and has not turned. I also learn that the incessant itching and red bumps I have acquired within a week are called pupps (a rare skin rash that only happens to only pregnant women and then only 1 in100) and that it will not go away until sometime after birth. With my hormones going wild, I worry to no end that my son will not turn. I prepare myself for the next appointment that will tell me if I need to try an inversion or if I may need a Cesarean section.
The week between thirty-six and thirty-seven is a quick seven days. While I have been waiting for my son to head in the right direction, my husband has found his way forward. I have written about my frustration, fury and sadness at how he has not been the person I needed, and how I had I realized I could not make him into the man I wanted him to be. But he has changed from within, found strength and determination. He has taken stock of who he is and what he can do to be the father this family needs, and how he can be the man he wants to be. He will be a soldier, committing himself to serving and protecting this country…and us. It is a huge decision, a turning point in his own life that points him toward the exit door of the life he is leaving behind.
Still, he needs my help with paperwork he must assemble for enlistment. All the turmoil and getting everything prepared for the baby and organizing his documents, I forget all about the upcoming appointment. When we go in to see my doctor at my thirty-seven week mark, I get the bad news: my son is still inverted. My baby is positioned sideways in my belly and the doctor says they can’t do inversions at our local hospital. It’s either a C-section, go to Tacoma, or wait. I chose to wait, praying my baby would turn on his own. I have faith. After all, I know my prayers for my husband have been answered.
While waiting for the thirty-eight week appointment there is so much bustle with the holiday coming up, my husband’s GED testing (he passed and, Lord, was I thankful and proud of him), and getting ready for the baby doctors tell me I will see the first week of January. We went through clothes (ours and the baby’s), blankets, put up cleaning supplies, and talked about the plans for the future since so much had changed so quickly. My husband did his swearing-in to join the Army and we needed a plan for the months to come when I would be without him.
I have a warm, safe place for me and my child until I join my husband wherever he will be stationed. A wonderful woman from our church will take me in and allow me to live in a private space in her home. This is such a blessing. The place where we had been living lacked proper plumbing and heating. It was all we could afford, two kids without high school educations, no money and a child on the way.
The doctor tells me my son is now head down, aimed for the exit out of me and into this world. Our baby is finally in position. Now it is just a waiting game. The next appointment will be December thirty-first. Christmas and family events keep us busy. The start date for my husband’s basic training has been moved up. He will be leaving us sooner than we first thought. The Army needs him, but so do I. Now I have to think about these months ahead when I will be alone with my new child. My thoughts are focused on time and events: When would the baby show himself? Will he be born before his daddy leaves? Would we risk inducing birth if he hasn’t showed or showed signs of coming?
This third trimester has brought more anxiety than the first two—and they were hard enough. But I close out this last stage of my pregnancy filled with so much joy. In the depths of despair and hopelessness, unexpected loneliness and fear for the future, I never thought I would again be this happy.
(We rejoin Ravyn, who asked to share her journey with us. In the first installment (click here), she and her nineteen-year old boyfriend decided to marry and do what it took to bring their child into the world. Pregnancy radically changed Ravyn, a “horrible person” as she has described herself, into a young woman finding strength and determination. But her teen husband has not been growing with her. In this installment she describes a very rough patch for anyone, let alone one so young and without resources or family support. And though this installment is filled with despair, we have a preview of what it is to come. The boy and girl who created a new life are becoming a man and woman building a family. Please return for Ravyn’s final trimester installment.)
How much pressure and disappointment and let-down can a person experience without falling to their knees in tears? How much can one fight for their love when there is so little love to fight for? I couldn’t keep going without my God to help me…I wouldn’t have been able to survive this second trimester without His guiding hand.
My baby is growing. Soon we would find out the gender and whether my child is healthy. Why was I so unhappy? I worked myself to the point of crying in pain most of the time; my feet, ankles, back, and head, seemed to be my enemies. At the end of the day, coming back from working to support us, who did I have waiting for me? No one…no one who wouldn’t frown and sigh when I asked for a back massage. This was when people started to tell me, “He won’t change.” “He isn’t gonna try.” “He isn’t ready for this”, “He’s just not gonna do it…” not even “For the baby.”
It kept hitting harder and harder with every word they spoke. They were right. The husband I loved wasn’t ever going to change. Not now when change in him was what I really needed. I prayed for help and watched for the slightest reason to be optimistic. I shouted at him like a fool when I got exasperated and I was too hurt to think. His actions were killing me.
Between the fighting and the silence there was nothing. There is nothing when the other person isn’t willing to fight. Not for himself. Not for us.
Twenty weeks “with child” and I got so excited. I had made it to the halfway point…and I got nothing out of him. I was truly alone in this. There was no excitement or real joy on his part. He was soaked in fear and rejection of the responsibility he wasn’t prepared to take on. We grew distant. I worked more, prayed more, I wished and hoped he would just see how much I needed him. I tried to have conversations, all the while feeling the child move inside me, feeling my baby grow stronger.
But no matter how many talks…there was no change, even after he said he would make an effort. The ultrasound for our baby’s gender rolled around, and he sat through the appointment on his phone playing games, and my heart turned cold. He got a job for two days a week and quit looking for anything more that could possibly help. He then lost his little job and I covered that month’s rent with help from our church. I talked to him about it, our uncle talked to him, his step-mom, friends, family…no one seemed to get through to him. It was about him, the games, not us. Not our family. I was watching the one person I really wanted fade away because of this child inside me.
School started and he did so well. He completed the courses on time and I got hopeful, I prayed as my child started to be able to be felt by others when they placed their hand on my belly. My miracle was really going to happen when this child was born. But thoughts circled me throughout everything. What if this baby was better with someone else? With no real help, I can’t possibly cover the costs of this new life and all it needs to thrive and be whole. I begged my Father to help me. To be softer and more loving so I could help my husband find the right path. Where is it all going? What lies ahead now frightens me when at the beginning, with the joyous news of the life inside me, all I felt was hope and excitement and confidence that we…we, the two of us together, helping each other…could be the kind of people our child needed us to be.
Just memories now. Only a few months have passed but those bright days seem so long ago.
All these emotions and feelings, the physical and mental realities that seem so much larger than me, a seventeen-year old without a high school diploma facing this blessing that is such a challenge, feeling so alone. I need calmness and there is only frenzy and worry. I need a sense of some sort of control and all I see is the world slipping away from me.
I keep trying to return to the arms of my God. I know he is the only one who can truly help me through this.
Stories not being told, voices not being heard. Port Townsend Free Press set out to address that shortcoming in our local journalism scene. That means more than politics and investigative reporting, if we are to meet the goals we have set for ourselves. This young woman approached us with the idea of writing about her teen pregnancy and sharing what was in her head and heart at each step towards her son’s birth. Jefferson County is old, face it. Most people are far removed from the challenges of the children and teens around us. We need to be reminded, to learn and understand better what they are facing. We do not know where Ravyn will take us, but she has our trust and confidence. We hope and pray for the best, and want to let her know we support and admire the strong woman is becoming through the way she is embracing this huge challenge early in her young life. We publish her articles under the name which she has chosen for herself and by which she is known in her community–The Editor
A bright, new life enters the world through me. Even at 17 and knowing the impossibilities and challenges ahead, I know this child is more than me. God saved me through my baby boy. I had been a horrible person, to myself and others. This baby inside my body is transforming me. I wouldn’t do a thing to change His plan for me, and this child that now depends on me for everything.
Rent, diapers, stroller, car seat, food; a whirlwind of sudden expectations and needs that most won’t face at this age. That’s what this pregnancy has brought upon me–me and my husband, who is still a teenager himself. As a pregnant teen, I had many choices. Even as an adult I would have had these choices but they seemed more crucial at this young age. Do I abort my child? Give him up for adoption? Do I marry the father? Do I love the father? Was this even remotely a good mistake…? No, no, yes, yes, and no. There was no mistake, no accident. It all happened for a reason. I am convinced of that.
I hadn’t expected the test to be positive. Stress and hate and sadness and loneliness were all I could see and taste. My period being late? Common in situations of distress. Tired? Aren’t I always? But that test proved what many had said and told me was the truth. Maybe I was denying it to myself, but that extra pink line on that test card was unmistakable. My boyfriend at the time was sitting outside the restroom I was using. When I showed him the card with the colored lines, his whole face seemed to collapse, age, then brighten all within seconds. There was no doubt what we would do. It was ours, and this child would stay with us no matter the consequences.
Days passed. Another test. Another positive result. We had to tell our parents.
Everything went by in a blur after that. Our parents wanted to make sure we were not reading the results wrong. More tests followed. Papers were signed. I had to start learning about insurance, how much doctors cost and how medical bills get covered. Lots of appointments, the school year ending, the anxiety and joys of ultrasounds; my future was changing fast as my past dropped away. I married the father of my child on the 23rd of June, sealing our family together and starting a new chapter in three lives.
We moved in together. We pay rent together, laugh, cry, fight, and dream together. I couldn’t ask for more and I wouldn’t want any less. It seemed perfect. I got my old job back. I had my lover with me. My baby was healthy and growing. I was a new person.
Then my first paycheck came in….and the second. Realty hit hard. How could we ever make it on this small income? The Social Security for my husband stopped. He didn’t have a job and there suddenly was less than $500 a month between us…when rent was $700! I cried. “We can’t make it,” was my only thought. I was bringing my child into a world of disappointment, crime, sadness. The grim, daily news on the television and radio, the money not being enough, and not enough love in the world—in my life!—to compensate for the bad.
Oh, Lord, why has this happened to me?
NEXT: The Second Trimester
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