How To Speak To Your Pregnant Teen Daughter

Before considering how you might respond to the news that your unmarried teenager is pregnant, take a brief tour of the emotions and thought processes that are likely to be swirling through her mind and heart.

Fear is an overriding emotion in nearly every teen pregnancy.

"I can't tell my parents. They'll kill me!" "How can I finish school when I'm pregnant?"

"My boyfriend will take off if I don't have an abortion."

The adolescent with a crisis pregnancy probably sees nothing but loss on the horizon—loss of love, time, education and physical health. Fear of one or more of these losses propels most of her other responses. Remember that the average age difference between the father of the baby and the teenage mother is 6.4 years.

Denial is common, especially during the early weeks of pregnancy when the only indication might be one or more missed periods, a little fatigue, possibly some nausea or even a positive pregnancy test. The longing for things to be "the way they were" may delay acknowledging the problem and seeking appropriate help for weeks or even months.

Ambivalence about being pregnant may cause fluctuating emotions. One day the only solution may appear to be an abortion, while the next the prospect of a cuddly baby may seem appealing. Time spent with a friend's crying newborn may jolt the emotions in yet another direction. Indecision and apparent lack of direction in such an overwhelming situation are common.

Guilt. When a pregnancy results from the violation of moral values held since childhood, an adolescent will usually feel ashamed and worthless. Her growing abdomen becomes a constant reminder of her failure. This is a time when you can come alongside your child and cement a lasting relationship with her.

Pressure to have an abortion. This may come from several directions. A teenager may be weighing what appears to be a dismal future of hardship and remorse against a quick and relatively inexpensive procedure. "No one needs to know, and I can get on with my life."

A boyfriend (who may be dealing with his own fear and guilt, along with concerns about future financial responsibilities) may exert considerable pressure to abort, even offering to pay the bill. He may also threaten to bail out of the relationship if the pregnancy continues. Some parents, worried about their daughter's future or perhaps their own reputation in the community (or even the prospect of being responsible for the actual child-rearing), may also find abortion attractive.

The "cuddly doll" mentality. Some unmarried teenage girls see their pregnancy unrealistically as an escape from a difficult and unpleasant home situation. They may envision a baby as a snuggly companion who will require roughly the same amount of care as a new puppy, not realizing the amount of energy a newborn will take from her without giving much in return (especially during the first few weeks). Teens with this mindset need to adjust their expectations of child-rearing—not to drive them to abort, but to help them make more appropriate plans. If adoption is not chosen as a solution, some careful groundwork should be laid to prevent serious disappointment and even the mother's abuse of the baby.
Excerpted from Let's Talk About Sex, Copyright 1998 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International Copyright secured.

A Husband's Role During Pregnancy & Childbirth

Giuditta Tornetta

In the seventies, a partner's role in the birthing and pregnancy process was finally brought to where it belonged: next to the mother. With the advent of the Bradley birthing methods, fathers were finally given something important to do. They became "coaches" for the birthing event, and their need to be needed was fulfilled.

Yet, the nine long months ahead of the "world series" game is a difficult and vague time for the men in our lives. Men really have no concept of how we feel physically and emotionally during this time, so they need our help and direction to create a safe and friendly environment for the mother-to-be and the child. They need to feel part of this miraculous process to establish a relationship with the unborn child early on.

Communication
Often feelings of fear, worry, and anxiety are common for most new fathers. We need to entitle our men to their feelings. Asking your partner how he would like to be involved at this point might end up backfiring. Most men's answer to a direct question like this one will say, "I don't know! What would you like me to do?"

This can only create frustration for both of you, and there is no need for that. One thing I have learned through the years is that if you don't ask for what you want and need, you probably will not get it. Stop thinking he is psychic. Stop thinking "If he loves me he'll know what I really need and want."

Know that what you want or need has nothing to do with his love for you. His giving what you want and need, or telling you honestly what he can and cannot give is no measure of his love.

Find outside support
One person alone cannot, and never will be able to, give me all that I need. A famous African adagio says, "It takes a village to raise a child," and I believe it takes a village to accompany any of us through our lives.

Your partner cannot be the only source of your fulfillment; you must create a support group especially in this miraculous time. Find friends who are willing to listen, find other mothers-to-be (your healthcare provider, your doula can help you with this one), and find chat rooms and web sites to answer your questions. Enroll in prenatal yoga or exercise classes.

Find a therapist if you feel the need to work on some of the tough issues that are coming up. Your insurance might cover a few sessions. No matter where and what you must rely on, multiple sources of support await your asking.

Yes, it is your time to get pampered, dear one, but remember that men also go through incredible changes during this time. They might not be hormonal, nor will they show up physically, but having a child is an emotional, mental and spiritual event for both of you. Acknowledge the little and big things he does for you. Tell him how to be useful, welcome him in your arms as often as you can, and remind him why you love him and why you think he will make a great father. This is such a magical time for both of you, cherish it. Every moment counts!

Love tips
# The best way to get your needs met is meeting your partner's needs. This is the concept of unconditional love. You receive what you give. And if you really want something from your partner ask and be specific.

# When you have something important to talk about, ask for a quiet and convenient time for both of you. Most anything can wait, if you overwhelm your partner with questions or an "important" subject the minute they enter the home you might not get the results you are looking for. I know it sounds ridiculous at first, but making an appointment to discuss what is in your mind will give both of you time to relax first and settle in.

# Tell your partner how special he/she is -- often. We are so quick to criticize and slow to praise.

# Don't improvise when it comes to your partnership. Most relationships need a little work. Together, attend workshops, see a couple therapist, or read books on enriching your relationships.

# Spend time thinking about all things you love about your partner and be grateful for each and every one of them.

# When you are upset about something, stop, sit down and write down what (WHAT not who) made you upset and see if you can find your part in it. It takes two to tango. Knowing your part will make your anger be balanced.

# Have you ever thought about what is it like to be in a relationship with you? What would you like more or less from this relationship?

# Keep romance and passion alive!

* Surprise him/her with tickets to his/her favorite event
* Take the car to be washed
* Have breakfast for him/her when they wake up
* Give her/him a back rub -- foot rub etc.
* Plan a picnic at the park
* Leave a love note
* Bring flowers home
* Sing her her favorite song or play it and ask her to dance with you
* Look at each other while you kiss or make love
* Tell her/him you love her in ten different ways -- get creative
* Get involved in the pregnancy from the beginning
* Take her to as many Doctor's appointments as you can
* Make time to discuss the future of your baby
* Make time to discuss the birthing experience you both want

# Stay close through crisis. Hormones run wild in these times, understand tears, moods and tensions, stay close and at times just listen.

# Don't EVER criticize yours mate's body!

52 Ways To Support Your Wife During Pregnancy

Giuditta Tornetta

Every dad needs support, encouragement, information, confidence and tools to help him be as involved as he possibly can with his new family. Here are some ideas that will make you popular around the house and make your wife the envy of all of her friends; pregnant and otherwise:

1. Offer to give her back rubs and foot massages.

2. Suggest activities that might be harder to do when the baby comes, like going to movies or concerts.

3. Bring home roses for no reason at all.

4. Vacuum the house, even under the bed, without being asked.

5. Give your wife lots of hugs; research shows that the more she is hugged, the more she'll hug the baby after he comes.

6. Buy her a moisturizing bubble bath.

7. If you're traveling on business, arrange to have a friend take her to dinner.

8. Offer to pick up a pizza on your way home from work, and surprise her with a pint of her favorite frozen yogurt, too.

9. Offer to run errands. Better yet, do those before you are asked.

10. Do the laundry before it piles up.

11. Tell her you think she's going to be a great mother.

12. If she arrives home after you, have a candlelight dinner on the table, complete with sparkling cider.

13. Write her a love letter and send it to her in the mail.

14. Go away for a romantic weekend (together, of course).

15. Buy a toy or outfit for the baby, have it gift-wrapped, and let her unwrap it.

16. Buy her a pretty maternity dress.

17. Go on a long walk with her.

18. Learn baby CPR

19. Offer to give her a back rub -- again.

20. If you smoke, stop.

21. Tell her she's beautiful. Then tell her again a few hours later.

22. Pay extra attention to making sure she has enough to eat--pack some snacks for her before the two of you go out for an evening or for a hike.

23. Organize a surprise baby shower for her.

24. Keep a list of your favorite names or buy her an interesting name book.

25. Paint a picture for or write a letter to your unborn baby.

26. Set up some interviews with potential child-care people.

27. Tell her she looks good even if she's put on weight.

28. Buy her a Mother's Day gift -- even if it's November.

29. Go to her prenatal appointments.

30. Keep a journal, either written, tape-recorded, or videotaped of what you're thinking and feeling during the pregnancy.

31. Do something with her that she knows you absolutely hate to do

32. Take her to visit the nursery at your local hospital.

33. Help her address envelopes for the birth announcements.

34. Learn a few easy recipes.

35. Smile and nod agreeably when she says, "You have no idea what it's like to be pregnant."

36. If you already have children, take them to the park and let your partner have time alone to relax or run an errand she's had to put off.

37. Surprise her with breakfast in bed on a lazy Sunday. Or, on a workday, get up five minutes earlier and surprise her with a power shake.

38. Take the day off from work and hang around the house with her.

39. Give other expectant mothers seats on trains and buses.

40. Make a donation to a local children's hospital or school.

41. Discuss your fears with your partner. Listen to hers too, but don't make fun of them, no matter how insignificant they may seem to you.

42. Paint or wallpaper the baby's room.

43. Listen to her complain and don't tell her she's complaining.

44. Help put together the changing table and crib.

45. Install smoke detectors in your house.

46. Make a new will that includes your baby.

47. Join a health club together.

48. Clean out closets to make room for baby things.

49. Call her on the phone during the day -- just to tell her you love her.

50. Offer to carry her bags.

51. Buy a few tapes of her favorite music to listen to in the labor room.

52. Say "No" if she asks if she's acting crazy.

Sexual Advice For Teens Via SMS

A charity is rolling out a pioneering service that gives young people sexual health advice by text message after a successful pilot in the two boroughs with the highest rate of sexually transmitted disease in Europe.
Safe Haven is launching Text Sam across Britain to provide information for young men and women about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and sexuality.
It was piloted in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, where almost 90% of young people have had a sexually transmitted disease, according to the charity. The text service received more than 42,000 requests for information in just two months during its pilot.
The innovative service was developed after a survey found 96% of 14- to 16-year-olds depended on their friends for advice. Text Sam hopes to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections by letting young people make informed decisions.
Jacqui Jennings, the scheme's operations manager, said: "We have a national crisis on our hands which is getting more out of control every day. We as a society have an obligation to inform our young people of the possible consequences of having sex. We cannot expect young people to make sensible decisions without knowledge."
The charity said new diagnoses of syphilis, thrush, chlamydia and human papilloma viruses - some of which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer - had also risen in the two boroughs.
Nationally, nearly 1million people were tested for sexually transmitted diseases during 2006. Diagnoses of new sexually transmitted diseases in the UK rose by 2% to 376,508 in 2006 and new cases of genital herpes were up 9% to 21,698, according to the Health Protection Agency.
The UK has the highest teenage birth rates in western Europe - twice the level found in Germany, three times higher than France, and six times above figures in the Netherlands, according to a Unicef report.
· To obtain free sexual health information, text Sam to 60030. A text message will be sent which contains links to the nearest sexual health clinic and advice centres plus information about infections.

The Most Wicked Issue in American Politics

John Neffinger

You might have thought the first abortion decision rendered by our new Supreme Court (Opus Dei edition) would generate a firestorm of commentary, especially if it might significantly limit late-term abortion rights.

Instead, the reaction to the recent decision upholding the "Partial-Birth" abortion ban has been decidedly muted. A handful of writers tackled some of the decision's implications (Jill Filipovic had a good piece in HuffPost the next day). But the bitterest voice to be heard was that of Justice Ginsburg herself, who called it "alarming."

So why did no one seem alarmed? For starters, it had been a rough week. Everywhere you looked there were images from the carnival of violence at Virginia Tech -- the shooter's face twisted in hatred, him posing with his guns and hammer (hammer?), diagrams and reenactments of what it must have been like in those classrooms.

But I suspect there's another reason we hesitated to jump back into the breach. Reading about the abortion decision, it was hard not to think: "Oh no, not this again." The issue of abortion rights is just more upsetting, more depressing and meaner than any other issue in American politics. Nothing else quite compares.

As horrible as the Virginia Tech shooting was, we could at least all share our grief. True, the inevitable gun control debate followed: should bad guys be disarmed or should good guys be armed to shoot first? But both sides at least agree that non-threatening innocents should not get shot.

The conflict over abortion has no bottom -- no matter how deep you dig, there's no place both sides can come together and recognize one another's humanity. In part, that's because of the biology: in an unwanted pregnancy, the woman's interest is for the fetus to cease to exist entirely, while the fetus' presumed interest is for the woman to endure weeks of sickness and unwelcome bodily transformation, followed by many hours of incredible pain... followed by years of hard work, emotional strain, expense, and responsibility. As long as you have people eager to speak on behalf of a fetus as if it was a whole person, those are some seriously irreconcilable differences.

You might think that both sides could at least agree on preventing unwanted pregnancies. But that's where things get weird. It turns out the hard-core anti-choice folks don't actually care so much about preventing fetal suffering: Despite all the studies proving that improving birth control access and teaching adolescents about sex reduces unwanted pregnancies, serious "Pro-lifers" oppose these ideas, and vigorously.

So what are they after? Apparently, the heart of the matter for hard-core anti-choice folks is that sex should only be for making babies. That means it's only for married people, and kids have no business knowing about it. That part of their vision has some appeal in our dizzyingly hypersexualized culture, as unrealistic as it is. But the other corollary is that all pregnancies should be carried to term, either as a blessed gift to a happy family... or as divine punishment for a loose woman.

I doubt that New York Times columnist David Brooks is among those who secretly yearn to outlaw premarital sex, but he did celebrate the Court's decision with a paean to the fetus in last Sunday's paper. His piece lovingly detailed the science on fetal brain cell growth and eye development and what not, and then closed with a call for a 'sensible' approach to abortion -- featuring parental consent requirements for minors. The thing is, to come up with a sensible compromise, you first need to make sense of both the positions you're compromising between.

From a broad public-policy view, parental choice laws make no particular sense. As a general rule, children should not be having children because they are not prepared to raise children. Do we really want laws that make it more difficult to keep children from having children? If abortion is allowed for anyone, doesn't it make the most sense for unhappily pregnant teens? And since a teen generally does not need her parents' consent to have a kid, why exactly should she need their consent not to?

But this debate does not happen in the realm of logic. Parental consent laws appeal to parents' primal fear that their kids are having sex and getting in trouble and they're the last to know. Debates on the issue typically invoke the image of a solid middle-class family with a rebellious teen girl who falls in with a bad crowd and needs to be set straight. And that's about where the thinking stops.

Sometimes that's the reality of teen pregnancy: a loving, understanding family, and a kid who either made some stupid decisions or had birth control fail them. And in some of those cases, a parental consent law might be just the thing to nudge the reluctant teen to have a much-needed heart-to-heart with her parents.

Of course most teens in that rosy scenario will turn to a trusted parent anyway. But what happens when the scenario is less rosy? Tolstoy said every happy family is the same but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way: that makes for a lot of heavy issues for this law to get mixed up in. What if the parents are abusive? What if they choose to punish their daughter for her misbehavior by withholding consent, and maybe throwing her out of the house? Or what if they just would have preferred not to know?

Then there's the scenario nearest to the hearts of anti-choice advocates: what if the parents are anti-choice? Should they be able to force their daughter to give birth? Imagine the decision resting with a pregnant teen's father. He has never voluntarily endured anything as painful as childbirth (unless he's undergone elite military training to resist torture, or maybe starred in a Jackass movie). Should he have the right to force that on his daughter, when she wants to have an abortion and get on with her life?

Many years ago, a friend of mine had a condom break on her with a new boyfriend and ended up pregnant. Although I do think it is vitally important for stories like these to be shared, the particulars of her story are not mine to tell. Suffice it to say that the decision-maker in her family believed strongly that abortion was a sin. Thankfully, nobody had passed any "sensible" parental consent laws back then, and my friend, while deeply upset and chastened by the ordeal, ended her pregnancy safely and legally and finished school. Today she is professionally successful, happily married, and a loving mother.

I wonder what David Brooks would say about a situation like my friend's. Or what Justice Kennedy would say, for that matter. Might they surprise us, take a fresh look at the issue, even a little? Perhaps, perhaps not.

What we do know is this debate will be won or lost on whether people empathize with the developing fetus or the pregnant woman (or girl). And as long as it's all about the fetus, as long as women's stories are still not being heard, women (and the women and men who love them) lose.