Pregnant at 13, they said I’d ruined my life, but it’d only just begun Bridie Walker, 45, Doncaster
Rolling my eyes, I dragged my school bag into the toilet cubicle. ‘This is stupid,’
I called to my friend Anna in the cubicle next door.
But I did it anyway, weeing in the paper cup.
It was late 1991 and, both 13, I’d agreed to go with her to the family planning clinic.
She was worried that she was pregnant.
Somehow she talked me into doing a test too.
‘So I don’t feel so alone,’ she’d pleaded.
‘I’ve just had my period,’ I sighed.
Ten minutes later, Anna walked out of the clinic grinning with relief.
But I felt like my legs were about to buckle.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I whispered as we wandered to the local shop.
‘You’re kidding?’ Anna gasped.
It was all I could manage to hear as the nurse broke the news.
And the fact I was nine weeks gone.
How will I tell Mum and Dad?
Just then as I left the clinic, I bumped into my boyfriend Ben, then 17.
The love of my life, so I thought.
Snuggled up in bed with Ben, at his house opposite the school, thoughts of pregnancy had been the last thing on my mind as we listened to Bryan Adams on repeat.
But now, as I took him aside, told him my news, I realised things would never be the same again.
‘I can’t do this,’ he told me, ending our relationship. I was heartbroken.
Only, something else stirred inside me.
‘I’ll take good care of you, little one,’ I whispered in my bedroom later, stroking my tummy.
The maternal urge that swept over me took me by surprise.
I’d never even babysat or cooed over babies.
For the first time, I felt like I really knew what love meant
Dad and Mum – who were divorced – reckoned I’d ruined my life.
‘But you have options,’ Mum pleaded.
But there was no doubt in my mind – I knew I was keeping the baby.
Over the next months, everyone wrote me off in a torrent of disappointment and disgust.
‘You can forget all about college,’ Mum sighed.
‘Didn’t anyone tell you about the pill?’ my doctor sneered.
‘You have other things to worry about,’ said my teacher, glaring at my swollen tummy while handing out homework.
So I put aside my dreams of a law career, read up on pregnancy, childbirth and baby care instead.
When I was six months pregnant, Ben and I got back together.
Then, in September 1992, it was time.
Hunched over in agony, timing my contractions on my Garfield digital clock in my room, I braced myself.
I can do this… Hours later, aged 14, I gave birth to my daughter Chloe
