Mothers and Nursing

After I found out I was pregnant, I decided to continue school and show everyone that I wasn't going to let a teen pregnancy affect my education goals. Well, I ended up choosing not to go to the Public High School and selected the local Teenage Parenting Program at an offsite locale. We had five classrooms to go to there and we got a whole lot of individual attention.

Going to this "school" was the best decision I had ever made so far. We were given a syllabus and told that we could work as fast or as slow as we wanted to. Well, knowing that I had a baby on the way within a few months, I decided to hurry through the second semester of tenth grade (which I had terribly failed due to my sexcapades to the beach everyday) and got through the first semester of eleventh grade before my daughter was born in February.

Seeing that I was working so fast through High School, our counselor thought she better get together with me and start discussing my future. We discussed my likes and dislikes and I told her that I really wanted to do something in the medical field. I had always wanted to be some sort of doctor, but with having a baby, I decided to settle for becoming a Registered Nurse and go for a Master's in that. Since I am fluently bi-lingual, I saw great opportunities for myself. The counselor and I started researching nursing programs and found one at a school that was seven hours away.

We discussed housing and sitting while I went to school. Being a minority, and a single parent, she was able to find grants that would pay for school, day-care, rent, books, transportation and anything else I would need for the entire time it would take me to graduate. I was excited!!! Things were finally looking up for me and my teen-pregnancy had turned into just a blip that would end up positively.....or so I thought.

Little did I know that when my counselor had a meeting with my mom, my mother would not let me sign up for a school "so far away". I was a brand new mother. I'd kill the baby. I didn't know the first thing about caring for myself let alone a child far from her ever-controlling eye.

Unfortunately, I had just turned seventeen and needed my parents permission to be able to go away to college. So, there went my Nursing School dreams and here I sit working in an office sixteen years, a husband and two additional kids later. I think this was her way of making me pay for not being able to kick me out of the house when she found out I was pregnant. Hopefully someday, I will be able to fulfill my dream of becoming a Registered Nurse with a Masters. One can only dream...