Maricruz O.

Rodriguez Ortiz 02/26/14 PSYCH 1100 Section One Paper Being 17 and pregnant, attending school and working every day at a local Dennys, was a situation I never saw myself in. I could never call my baby a mistake, but it would have been a smarter choice to have a child after high school. My boyfriend is 18, a recent high school graduate. He doesnt go to school right now but he does work two jobs, one in the morning at the concessions at the movie theatres and another job in the afternoon as a cashier at Hollister. I am Italian and my boyfriend is Brazilian, were not married yet, but we do plan to get married in the future when we are more financially stable. As of right now we are living in the basement of my parents house, we live in Norwalk, southern California. We have been pretty stressed with Jeremiahs arrival. Since my boyfriend had to get surgery on his knee due to a sport injury, we have been paying off hospital bills and trying to save up for Jeremiahs necessities. Jeremiahs conception was normal, we were just being teenagers, experimenting and not thinking anything of it. The first five months after Jeremiahs conception were easy, pregnancy wise, I didnt have morning sickness, I was able to eat any foods that I wanted too since I didnt have any gaging either. But, my cravings were out of the roof. I craved pretty much everything and even though we were tight on money, my boyfriend would always bring me what I wanted. On the sixth month I went in for my babys checkup and got an ultrasound and blood drawn out for testing, just in case Jeremiah had any chances of being born with any birth defects. We waited

and the results came in. The results showed that my boyfriend was a carrier of Down syndrome, (Ch.2, pg.50, Down syndrome, a condition in which a person has 47 chromosomes instead of the usual 46, with three rather than two chromosomes at the 21st position), which meant that Jeremiah could be born with an extra chromosome, 47 rather than the normal 46 we all have. Since Im not a carrier, he only has a 50/50 chance. But thats still very high. We were very worried but no matter how our baby came into this world we said we would keep him. By the time I hit my 8th month, I got tested again and our baby boy was healthy, with no signs of having developed Down syndrome. When I hit my 9th month, a week later I got really bad contractions, I had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance because I couldnt stand the pain of them, they were coming at me really strong. When I got to the hospital they rushed me into the emergency room, by that time I was already 3 centimeters dilated. With barely enough time to get an epidural. It took about 15 min to set in, by that time I had IVs in my arms. My contractions were already at 10 centimeters dilated, which meant it was time to push. I held on to my boyfriends hand harder every time the doctor told me to push. The pain wasnt as bad, and my delivery was a fast and easy one. I didnt have complications other than the pain of the contractions I had in the beginning. 10 hours of labor, for my first baby, it was good. The next ten months were incredible, seeing Jeremiah grow and learn new things every day was amazing. At ten months his Gross motor skills were phenomenal, (Ch.3, pg.95, Gross motor skills, physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping), he was able to walk by himself, walk up the stairs and dance occasionally whenever the music played. By the time Jeremiah was a year old he was more aware of his surroundings and certain things he wanted and wished to have. Every time he would grab his dinner spoon off the coffee table, it was his sign that he wanted to eat.

By his 12-13 month he started talking a little more and would repeat certain words we would speak to him. By the time Jeremiah was two years old, we were planning on leaving him with my boyfriends mom, so she could watch over him while him and I worked. Since Jeremiah was around us, but mostly me since his dad worked most of the time, he had very insecure resistant/ambivalent attachment when I tried to leave him at my boyfriends moms house, (Ch.4, pg. 143, Insecure resistant/Ambivalent attachment, a pattern of attachment in which an infants anxiety and uncertainty are evident, as when the infant becomes very upset at separation from the caregiver and both resist and seeks contact on reunion), he cried when I was about to leave for work. When I came back to pick him up, my boyfriends mom told me that he looked out the window to see when I would return. It was hard leaving Jeremiah, but I had too if I wanted to give him a better life.