Standing in line at the pharmacy, I smoothed my coat and gripped my handbag tighter. At the till, I nudged the pregnancy test across the counter with my left hand. “Pretty ring,” said the cashier responding exactly how I wanted her to. I needed her to know I was married; that I was old enough, mature enough and financially stable enough to be worthy of motherhood.
There’s a reason I was desperately seeking the approval of a stranger. The last time I bought a pregnancy test was 25 years ago. I say bought… I never made it into the pharmacy. Instead, I stayed in my boyfriend’s car while he went in to buy it. I was 17 and I couldn’t face the judgement - the kind rife in my small town, where everyone knows each other’s business. I couldn’t bear the idea of my mum - at home, none the wiser knowing mine.
I’ve taken a pregnancy test twice. Both times, it was positive. But while much has changed about pregnancy and childbirth in the years between, one thing hasn’t. As a 17-year-old college student, I was branded just another teenage mother; a baby having a baby. Now,
