A TEENAGER has revealed that she purposefully tried to get pregnant aged 15, as she believed it would help to straighten her life out.
Cassie Valdez, now 19, revealed that she struggled with drinking as a young teenager, and hoped that if she became pregnant, it would force her to stop.
However, things didn’t end up going quite as smoothly as she had planned.
Cassie, from Texas USA, fell into the wrong crowd whilst at school, and started running away from home, and staying at friends houses to get away from her strict mum.
After a while, she realised that this lifestyle was not for her, but she found it incredibly difficult to stop drinking, and felt like she was going crazy when she stayed at home.
“I knew if I didn’t stop, something serious was going to happen to me”, she said.
Cassie then met a boy, and as soon as she met him, decided that she wanted to get pregnant.
“In my mind, if I got pregnant, it was going to stop me going out and getting pregnant”, she said in a viral TikTok video.
Cassie said that she couldn’t see any other way out of the situation, which she now realises is foolish.
After just one and a half months of dating the boy, Cassie discovered she was pregnant.
“I was so happy because I really thought that this was the end to all of my problems”, she said.
However, she soon got a “reality check”, revealing that her pregnancy was “horrible” and made her depressed.
She added that the regrets she had over getting pregnant so young, led her to suffer from post-natal depression.
When her son arrived she said that she knew she loved him, but her PND symptoms made her feel like she didn’t love him, and didn’t want him.
She said that this feeling lasted for a whole year and she now wishes that she had waited.
However, despite her initial regrets, she revealed that she now doesn’t regret anything, and loves her son so much.
UK Teen Mum Statistics
Teen pregnancies in the UK have been decreasing considerably since 2007...
The under-18 conception rate has decreased considerably since 2007, reports Nuffield Trust.
Between 2007 and 2021, the under-18 conception rate in England and Wales decreased by 68%, from 42 per 1,000 women to 13 per 1,000 women.
This resulted in 13,131 under-18 conceptions in England and Wales in 2021.
She told: “I got pregnant the month I turned 15.
“I would do stuff just 14-year-olds just don’t do or are not supposed to do.
“I think I was getting myself into a really deep pool at just 14 years old and I knew if I didn’t stop, something serious was going to happen.
“Having a kid and getting pregnant was going to stop me from going, going out drinking.
“Everything I was doing that I wanted to change.
“I would just hope everyday the day of me meeting my son would come sooner.
“By planning to get pregnant at such a young age, I got a reality check of a lifetime.
“I felt like I regretted even getting pregnant in the first place, which was really sad.
“I wouldn’t change anything now that I do have him, because I love him so much.”
Fabulous will pay for your exclusive stories. Just email: fabulousdigital@the-sun.co.uk and pop EXCLUSIVE in the subject line.
