News

While many young girls who have babies find their lives stalled amid poverty and dependence, having a baby as a teenager need not spell doom. Here, young people tell Linda Green how, with the right kind of support, they can pick up the threads of their lives and move forward.

Syndie was 12 years old when she discovered she was pregnant. But far from thinking her life was over, she saw the pregnancy as a positive thing. Two years on, she is working towards her GCSEs and is devoted to her one-year-old daughter Grace.

The fact that Syndie has been able to cope so well with being a school age mum is due in part to the level of support she has received from the Leo Kelly Centre in Manchester.

The centre, part of the Manchester Hospital Schools and Home Teaching Service, offers full-time education for pregnant schoolgirls and schoolgirl mums. Qualified nursery nurses look after the babies in the unit nursery which the mums can visit during lesson breaks.

Syndie continued in her mainstream school for a short time after discovering she was pregnant and tried another pregnant schoolgirl unit before she found the support and educational opportunities she was looking for at the Leo Kelly Centre.

She says: "My old school was good, they helped me out with a lot of stuff. They bought me big jumpers and things that would hide the pregnancy so I wasn't made fun out of.

"I moved to a pregnant schoolgirl unit when I was five months pregnant because I was getting tired and I couldn't climb the stairs very easily at my old school.

"But after I had my baby, I was the only mother at the unit and they only offered half days and I needed a full education. I wanted to be with more people who'd had similar experiences to me."

Syndie voiced her concerns and was offered a place at the Leo Kelly Centre. She says: "I liked it when I came here because there were more girls my age and more babies for Grace to play with. The nursery nurses also seemed well trained.

"I'm getting a full education and I'm doing a full range of subjects. In the other unit I could only do maths, English, science and computer studies. Now I'm doing humanities, drama, art and everything else."

Syndie admits that she knew little about contraception before she became pregnant. "At school when it was time for sex education lessons I never actually did that. I wrote a note from my parents telling the school that I couldn't do it. I was a tomboy and I didn't want anything to do with that because I thought I wasn't going to have kids or even a boyfriend.

"I was quite happy when I found out I was pregnant. Although I wasn't happy for my parents because of how it looked. I was 12 at the time so it was quite hard for them. It was my decision to have the baby and I was happy with it."

Syndie, now 14, says she liked being a mum straight away and thinks she coped very well, aided by the support of her family and Grace's father. She remains positive about the future. "I'm really glad that I continued my education. I want to go to college and get a job working in a nice office."

When Nadine became pregnant she felt she wasn't given enough time or information to make the biggest decision of her life. She explains: "I was 14 when I found out I was six weeks pregnant. I went to a clinic at about six o'clock in the evening and they basically said I could either keep the baby or they would book me in for an abortion in the morning. That's what made me decide to keep him.

"I left school very quickly. I told one teacher I was pregnant and by the next day it was round the whole school. I think it would have been a problem to continue there, it was much better when I came to the Leo Kelly Centre. It helped me to be around other girls and their babies because it meant I was used to holding, feeding and changing babies before I had Connor."

For Nadine, now 16, the biggest problem with being a young mum has been trying to get health and medical professionals to take her seriously.

She says: "Connor was really poorly last November with bronchitis. The first doctor I saw told me it was a chest infection and four days later I saw an emergency doctor in the early hours of the morning and he also said it was a chest infection. Twelve hours later I was rushed into casualty with him.

"The doctors didn't take me seriously because of my age, they were talking to my mum about Connor instead of me and I was saying: 'Hello, that's my baby. He's my son and you can talk to me about him.'

"It happened all the way through when I was pregnant, doctors talking to my mum instead of me."

Fortunately Connor, now 15 months old, has recovered well since and the staff at the Leo Kelly Centre have helped Nadine to get him a nursery place when she starts her A-level course at college in September.

Trudy didn't realise she was expecting until she was six months pregnant. At 14 it came as a terrible shock. She says: "We didn't have much sex education at school. We had one lesson and that was it. Looking back now I think we should have had more."

She opted to go straight to the Leo Kelly Centre rather than return to school and says she found it easy to make friends and the staff were very supportive. But nothing prepared her for the actual birth.

"I was in labour for 18 hours. I had to have a Caesarean in the end, it was horrible. I didn't find looking after a baby that difficult because I'd helped to bring my little brother up and my mum gave me a lot of help as well. The most difficult part was when Amber was crying and I didn't know what to do."

Trudy, now 15, is grateful for the support she has received from her mum and her boyfriend's mum, who she and six-month-old Amber live with. And she says having Amber has made her more determined than ever to go to college to study child care and get a job working with children.

Some names had been changed to protect identities in this article.

My life

A fourteen-year-old girl describes how it felt when a close friend went off the rails.

Keeley has been part of my friendship group ever since primary school. We've always been the good kids in the class, the ones who handed in homework and did as we were told. Last year though, Keeley failed a maths exam and moved down a set. She never acted upset, but it obviously affected her. Gradually, she stopped working so hard - what's the point of trying if you fail anyway?

She started to change as a person as well. She told us that we should stop hanging round together as much, because other people thought it was weird to be so close. It felt horrible to hear her say that; we've never cared about what anyone else thinks.

To prove her point, she started sitting with a girl called Shelley, who is nice enough, but the sort of girl my mum (and Keeley's) would call a bad influence. She also turns her charm on and off - she was never really friendly with any of us apart from Keeley.

Before long, Keeley and Shelley were going to town together after school, hanging round bus stops, and chatting up boys. Keeley has never acted like that, not ever, and it was so surprising to see her change. Even worse was when Shelley persuaded her to truant.

She started forging notes from home so that she could leave school just before PE, or during assembly. Then she started to miss important classes, like maths and English, without bothering with the fake notes. Shelley walks out of school all the time, so Keeley thought it OK to do the same. I don't agree.

It was on one of their school-time trips into town when Shelley taught Keeley how to shoplift, beginning with small things and building up. Last time they went "shopping" together, Keeley stole £85 worth of cosmetics from big chain stores in two hours.

The thing I find most shocking about my friend's demise is the speed at which it has happened. Six months ago, Keeley would never have even considered missing a lesson, never mind walking out of school for hours. Now, she does exactly what she wants to.

It upsets me when I see what she has turned into. It's scary when I hear people talking on the news about teenagers truanting from school and turning to crime, and suddenly realise that they're talking about one of my best friends.

Names of children mentioned here have been changed to protect anonymity.