The first step towards Motherhood

I was 17 and going out with a guy I met through a friend. Nice guy, enjoyed his company but not "the one" I was waiting for. He understood that - I was upfront I wouldn't be sleeping with him so all's cool. So one day after a couple of months of dating we went to a party for someone he worked with. He disappeared ! We got to the party and he was gone like a puff of smoke. Unbeknown to me he'd decided that as I wasn't prepared to sleep with him and he felt the "need", he'd do what he could to make me dump him so he could go find what he needed without cheating on me. I can see his roundabout logic but he'd have done better just talking to me... so anyway.




At the party, the friend who had introduced me to the current boyfriend was there so I ended up heading over to him for a chat and saw this very very cute guy sitting with him. Now here's where you have to trust me - my first thought upon seeing this guy was "I'm going to marry him". I did actually tell my friend this somewhere during the evening and he laughed his head off at me but over the next month or so he did everything he could to help the relationship get started. So back to that night. This cute guy was stoned and somewhat inebriated but friend offered to drive me home when it was time (curfew from the parents) and made this cute guy come with him for company on the return trip. So I got to spend more time with cute guy and that was just fine with me. We got to my house and my younger sister (15 yrs old) comes prancing out desperately trying to catch the attention of cute guy as do 15 yr olds...


Fast forward a few days and I hear from friend that cute guy was interested in my younger sister. I was devastated. Well lucky for me, a couple of friends got in cute guy's ear about me being the one worth going out with and after some stuffing around and manipulations from friends he finally asked me out. Again I was an upfront gal - told him I wouldn't sleep with him unless I felt it was right for me. Took about 2 months and I decided - yep I was right first time, I'm marrying him. So we went out for a couple of months, started sleeping together and one night in October 1980 he went down on one knee at the train station and proposed to me. Didn't take much for me to say yes LOL. I was still 17 so my parents decided I could be engaged but couldn't wear the ring as I was still at school.


We had our engagement party in the January of 1981 and I started Year 12. Somewhere over the Christmas period I fell pregnant. Now, looking back I knew I was pregnant but I was in severe denial and told no-one. I lost a heap of weight when I got pregnant so blamed the lack of a period on that but as we got closer to my 18th birthday I started getting worried and a friend noticed my concern. She dragged me off to her doctor to be checked and as an 18th birthday present I got the phone call from the doctor (on my birthday) to say yes, the blood test was positive - I was pregnant. Well - what an 18th birthday hey? 1981, unmarried, Catholic, school girl, WTF was I to do? Cry buckets... that's what. Cute guy was ecstatic when I told him, he headed out to my place after work and as soon as he got there he tracked down my mum and told her I was pregnant. Didn't wait for me to be there, didn't say I was having a baby - said something like "She's pregnant, she's having my son". One very happy young man, one very pissed off mother-in-law to be. She mentioned something about an axe and bodily harm I'm told...

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