gibingus

congratulations. now pull your head out of your ass and wake the hell up. you are in deep shit, and this is the last place you should seek advice or validation for what you have done.

everyone is very supportive here, and i don't mean to be a killjoy, but here's the hard line that i didn't have time to say yesterday. and - in a tough love kind of way - it needs to be said so you think about this from all sides.

you had better be damn good and sure you are ready to do this. you've already said that you don't consider the big A words as options, but you have also shown yourself to be very, very young, inexperienced, and insecure. young people go through with this all the time, but the odds are against you and they are steep.

you love each other, fine and dandy. that is not going to be enough to get you through parenthood. parents are partners more than they are lovers. are you ready for the truth: new parents on average have sex less than 8 times over the entire first year of parenthood. parents need skills and experience to be effective when the challenges come up, at 19, you don't have those yet and your ability to get them will be handicapped.

your life - as you know it - is about to be over, forever. it will never, ever come back. your girlfriend will not finish college for a very long time, if at all. and you probably will not either. neither of you will sleep for the next year. your wife will be attached to the baby every 3 hours if you breast feed... you will be able to do nothing except be a parent. doors will close that will never open again, cutting you off from life experiences that in the end will strengthen you as a person, making you a better and wiser parent down the road. you will never have your own life, becuase your child's life supercedes yours. your earning potential will be diminshed, challenging you as a provider. your family's opportunities will be limited by the choices you make, you cannot deny this - it is a fact of life.

young people have strong convictions and are idealistic because they have yet to gather the experiences that temper your views and build wisdom. you are afraid of both of your parents. you cannot enter parnethood with that kind of fear, you need their unconditional support to survive this, at any age. especially when you are this young, you will need to rely on their experience because you don't have any.

good for you if you decide to go ahead with it, and good for you if you don't. there is no right or wrong answer. if you go ahead, you can never look back, and you can never back out. this child will depend upon you for EVERYTHING, and the responsibility is bigger than anything you can imagine. you need to ask yourself realistically if you are ready for it because there is a life at stake.

Picking out names is cute, but you need to start asking yourself the really hard questions. What are you going to do about health insurance? What is your income like? How are you going to pay the rent, morgage, daycare, put food on the table, shoes on the feet? How much is this kid going to cost you in the first year... probably tens of thousands of dollars. If you don't have it yourself, you either get it from insurance, your folks, or government aid... if you qualify. if you think your school has a ton of paperwork, you ain't seen nothing yet.

you need to get some counselling from a real, qualified person and not from a bunch of anonymous online people. go to the student counselling service, go to your church if you are religious, go to your town's family services, but go somewhere and talk to a professional. they might be able to hook you up with a support group, too. you are in trouble, the stakes are high, and it is not going to get easier. if you are afraid to talk to someone, take it as a sign that you are in denial of how tough this is going to be.

and you need to talk to your parents. now. don't wait. their reaction doesn't matter, that is in fact the least of your worries. you have real, practical problems to solve. face the music, you need them more than you can ever know. ready or not, you are a grown up now and you can't be acting like a kid in trouble. if you are, again, it is a sign that you are not ready to be a parent.

think of it this way, dude... you are about to have a kid, what if that kid turns out to be a girl and she comes to you 18 years from now and tells you her boyfriend knocked her up, but we really love each other and we're going to make it work. you've worked and sacrificed your whole life to provide her the opportunities you missed. what would you do?

this isn't a test... this is your life now. and it is really, really fucking hard. you sure you're up to it? ask yourself what is the biggest responsibility you have had to this point and then ask yourself again if you are doing the right thing by your kid if you decide to go through with this.

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if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.