Strollerderby : teen pregnancy pact

British Teen Makes History with Siamese Twins

JeanneSager — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:31:00 GMT

A British teenager and her husband will make medical history this week, but all they're too frought with worry to celebrate. Laura Williams is just eighteen. When she delivers conjoined twins this week via a C-section, she'll be the youngest-ever woman in British history to give birth to Siamese twins.

Williams and husband Aled, twenty-eight, have been told their twins, already named Faith and Hope, may not survive past the two-week mark. Like most parents, survival for their children is all the Williams' have focused on since her twelve-week sonogram revealed the babies' rare condition. Tests have confirmed the girls have separate hearts, which alone greatly enhances their chances of survival. They've also revealed the babies are joined from the breastbone to the top of the navel, but little else. Whether the girls share any major organs - which will play a large role in doctors' moves immediately following birth - has yet to be determined.

Laura Williams has spent the last month in a hospital under constant monitoring, in part because doctors warned that carrying this pregnancy to term could prevent her from ever again having a child. She'll be transferred to a hospital in London this week for the birth. "It's scary every day and it's been the hardest decision of our lives, but if they're meant to be in this world and if they've come this far, we've got to hope they'll make it the rest of the way," she told London's Daily Mail.

To have the strength to go forward with a pregnancy that could not only result in losing your children within two weeks but also destroy your chances of ever again having another child is incredibly brave and highly personal. I can't find fault with the Williams' decision; I can only cross my fingers for them that their brush with medical history is also a medical miracle.

No matter the outcome, at the very least, they have Faith . . . and Hope.

Image: Buckles Family (another set of conjoined twins)

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Now They Say No: Teens Deny 'Pregnancy Pact'

Amy Kuras — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT

Apparently, you folks are interested in the "pregnancy pact" story based on the amout of discussion it’s generated here. It's based on a report in Time Magazine that 17 girls from a Gloucester, Mass. High school decided to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

My last post on the matter drew huge comments, and I've seen other headlines about the story everywhere (including at the grocery store today, on a supermarket tabloid "We wanted to be like Jamie Lynn"—Pregnancy Pact Girls. Sure.)

And now some of the girls who got pregnant this school year are coming forward and saying there was no pact, that it was just chance.

I think something is rotten here, although I'm not sure what. The school generally sees 3 or 4 pregnancies a year, not 17, so something was up. However, the teacher who spoke to Time about the story has since refused to comment publicly.

And the larger question, of course, is why so many girls got pregnant, pact or no. Lack of access to birth control and information about sex ed and pregnancy prevention is one reason. The town is also dependent on the fishing industry –life there is pretty hardscrabble, it seems, and these girls had little sense of hope for their future. And many of them came from teen parents themselves.

Equally as important as why these girls got pregnant is why they so much as glancing at, much less having sex with, winners like one girl's babydaddy, who was quoted in the Guardian with this trenchant observation as to how the spike in pregnancies happened:

"They were horny, it was a cold winter. It's boring around this town. Nothing to do."

Oy.

Teens Make Pregnancy Pact -- Wha???

Amy Kuras — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:33:00 GMT

I know teen girls are not always the most rational of people, but, WTF?

Apparently a group of 17 girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts decided they would make a pregnancy pact with each other. A pregnancy pact. Not, you might think, a "let's not get pregnant and graduate and maybe even go to college" pact, no, this pact was to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

None of these girls were older than 16.

According to one of the school officials, they noticed something was amiss when there was a huge spike in girls coming in to the nurses' office for pregnancy tests. Many came in multiple times and several seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were.

One of the fathers is allegedly a 24-year-old homeless man.

This brain trust was looking for unconditional love, said community members and classmates (none of them would be interviewed for the Time story). Because little babies are such givers, really, always concerned with what their mom needs and wants, happy to sleep a little more or stop crying already because it's all about YOUR needs. Right?

Oh, but there is more than enough stupid to go around here. Community members got up in arms, not over what these girls did, but over the school nurse and principal suggesting that providing birth control without parental consent might help stem this tide. Both ended up quitting in protest.

Better yet? Some blame Juno. Yeaaahhh.