WELLNESS WEALTH KENYA

As we are progressing into the twenty-first century, issues of teenage and adolescent pregnancies have continued to increase. Campaigns on measures of eradicating early pregnancy cases have continued to run but despite the efforts, the numbers have continued to increase. A young mother is a woman who becomes a mother during the period between childhood and adulthood. They are usually school-going and still under parental care themselves.

Young mothers are facing different challenges as they transition to motherhood. As it is, being a young mother is not easy, it is accompanied by the burden of responsibilities, physical and medical issues, emotional and mental distress, inefficiency in a maternal role, financial problems, and lack of support from significant others and parents.
To gain a first-hand understanding of what it is like to be a young mother, I talked to one of my friends. She got pregnant during her second year in university and that experience change the course of her entire life. To quote her;

I don’t think there’s anything that punishes and inconveniences young women from humble backgrounds more than unplanned pregnancies.

Unless you have parents that are rich, do not get pregnant when you are still in school. Do not get pregnant before you are ready, financially. I had a chance to study abroad but I was an African student who was trying to get into Poland with a three month old baby and I felt chills in my body. With all the racism and the violence how do you navigate being a student and a young mother in a foreign country?

I am going to say something I hated to hear when I was younger but I am going to say it anyway. Men can check out of being parents so easily but as a woman you usually have to stick with that baby to the end. It is not fair but that is the norm.

Men can deny pregnancies. A man is the sort of person who can get you pregnant and swear to his parents he’s never seen you before. Being a woman does not grant you that luxury. If you ever get pregnant and you know in your heart that you are not ready, don’t hesitate to get that abortion.

A man can wake up one day and decide he isn’t interested in being a parent anymore and you can’t do anything about it. Suing for child support requires money. Getting help from FIDA is hectic. When they open a file for you they leave you to represent yourself. Ask anyone who’s ever gone through that process and you will know that the justice system only works for people who can afford legal representation.

We have countries that pay single mothers but before you have a child you are not ready for, remember you were born in a country that has a broken system. In 2021, 58 years after independence, a woman went into labor and gave birth to a child along the streets of Nairobi because nurses were on strike. If she had developed post-birth complications I hate to imagine what would have happened to her at that moment.

Having a child makes you vulnerable. In the first year of its life your life stops moving and it becomes the center of your world. Having a child requires solid support systems and money. It requires solid medical insurance and it’s something that is better done when you are not under pressure.

Conclusion

To conclude, when you go to school, do what took you there. Do not have children you cannot take care of. Use condoms. Abstain. Use contraceptives. Take emergency pills every weekend if you have to, get that abortion but never allow yourself to keep a child you are not ready for because it is the greatest form of violence you can ever subject yourself to.

A lot of people will tell you they survived. What they don’t tell you is the pain they endured before they got to end of the tunnel where there’s a light. Do not subject yourself to that. There’s nothing cute about survival.