“Life was hard, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was,” she said.
Now 17 and attending Beavercreek High School, Bundy said the hard part came after she found out she was pregnant at age 14.
“When I first found out, I was totally in denial,” she said. “I was kind of heartbroken because I knew I wasn’t going to be a teenager. A baby brings joy, but it can also bring anger and sadness.”
As a new season of MTV’s controversial hit reality show “16 and Pregnant” is set to begin Tuesday, area teens shared their experiences with parenthood.
They say it is far more real than what is portrayed on the show or its hit spin-off, “Teen Mom.”
Bundy, who lives with her boyfriend and grandparents, said she grew up quickly after becoming pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, Nevaeh Strader. But it wasn’t all pink ribbon and bows.
“They have a lot of shows that make you think pregnancy is this fly through time where you gain weight and you have a baby in the end,” said Bundy, who had a high-risk pregnancy and a strained relationship with her mother.
She plans to go to college but knows that it won’t be easy with a child.
“I love my daughter more than anything and I wouldn’t take her back, but I think, ‘Why would anyone want to have a baby in their high school years,’” Bundy said, noting that the parenting tools she’s been given through Greene County’s Graduation, Reality and Dual-role Skills have helped.
Train wrecks and missed marks
Shows that depict teen parenthood often miss the mark or are messy train wrecks, said Alison Bahns, project manager for Unified Health Solution’s Project Empowerment, an alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention program that provides education and mentoring to parents and expecting parents age 22 and younger.
She took a group of clients to see the movie “Juno” and they laughed at how unrealistic it was.
“We don’t like glamorizing it at all,” she said, noting that many teen parents are left to fend for themselves and their children. “Our students who have been successful have to work for it.”
They luckily have support from their parents, even if they become outcasts to friends who simply want to enjoy being teenagers without the hassles of a baby tagging along.
Most teen parents, particularly moms, are forced to grow up fast, Bahns said.
“Their parents are like ‘I am not raising your child.’ The teens have to go out and make money. They have to buy Christmas presents. What 16-year-old ever worries about insurance? When you have a baby that’s something you have to worry about,” Bahns said.
You’re pregnant
April Krull, 23, of Centerville said having a baby at 16 set her back in life.
“People who graduated with me are done with college now,” she said. “When I got my driver’s license, I was driving around with a baby. I wasn’t able to go to parties. I look at my friends now. They are graduated, starting jobs and getting married.”
Krull, who is in her seventh quarter at Sinclair Community College, has received assistance from Project Empowerment but has shelved her dream of being a doctor and attending a university.
“I have to wait until he goes to bed to get anything accomplished,” she said, noting that her 6-year-old son, Duane, struggles with behavioral issues. “Realistically, since I started college late, my goal is to be an RN.”
Krull said she doesn’t like the celebrity status that has been given to the girls who have appeared on the MTV shows.
Her experience was much different.
“I can vividly remember walking down the hall (in high school) and someone screaming, ‘You’re pregnant April Krull!’”
She was homeschooled her sophomore year partly to avoid the embarrassment.
“Everyone talked about it. Everyone knew. It spread like a disease all around the school.”
It’s all gone now
Lynne Howell, Stebbins High School’s GRADS instructor, said Mad River Schools supports her program for teen parents because it works.
Pregnant teens have a 50 percent dropout rate and many have repeat pregnancies, she said.
“We graduate 89 to 90 percent,” Howell said. “The ones that stick with me will see it through graduation.”
Education, not shame, should be the goal, Howell added.
“They have to be role models for their children,” she said. “They have to show their child what success looks like.”
Stebbins senior and Giulia Braghieri said she put her 20-month-old son, Marquise, first.
That meant losing out on friendships and dropping activities like ROTC, soccer and dance, something she started at age 4.
“All of that is gone,” she said. “I just don’t have me to worry about.”
Braghieri said her mother, who was also a teen mother, has been supportive, helps with Giulia’s son, but getting to that point wasn’t easy.
“She was crying and screaming at me, but three days later she was buying clothes,” the 17-year-old said.
Braghieri said people get judgemental and she has been rejected by her family in Italy. They won’t let her visit because she is a teen mom.
“I wouldn’t want anyone else my age to get pregnant, but I am not a bad person,” she said. “Everyone makes mistakes. But (pregnancy) was the consequence of my mistake.”
Bradlee Sorrell, one of the few males in Howell’s class, said his father called him dumb when he broke the news that he would be a father.
“He learned to accept it,” Sorrell said, adding that while he felt trapped by his then-girlfriend, he couldn’t imagine abandoning his yet-to-be born daughter.
“That’s not how I was raised. She’s like a part of me. She’s my child, something that is going to change my life,” he said. “If you are going to be man enough to have sex, you have to be man enough to be safe about it.”
Pictures of babies line the cabinets in the GRAD’s room at Stebbins.
If all goes as expected, by January a picture of Amber Flemming’s baby girl with join them.
The 18-year-old said she cried a lot when she found out she was pregnant while staying in New York with her boyfriend.
She soon moved back to Ohio and reconnected with her estranged parents.
The baby-faced senior with the growing belly acknowledged that things won’t be a walk in the park even if her boyfriend sticks around.
“No teen pregnancy is ever easy,” Flemming said, noting that she is preparing herself for the struggle ahead “I want to be the best mom I can be, but I know you have to work at it.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2384 or arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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