Being Certain

I was sure I was pregnant after I missed my period just once. I mean I was as regular as clockwork all my life. Something had to be wrong. But I was a Good Catholic Girl and being pregnant without the benefit of marriage was something that just was not done! Besides I was only sixteen. Talk about being scared! How do I tell the dorm mother that I was going to have a baby???? I knew of other girls who had "gone home for good" only to return after a few months, scared and sad. So I ran away. I hid until the cops located me. The home said I couldn't come back there. So I was placed in a group home then sent to Booth Memorial Home for Unwed Mothers in Chicago. I found out that my child's father had been sent away too. We were not allowed to get in touch with each other but we found a way to anyway. We had these romantic dreams of getting married and raising the baby. So once again I ran away from Booth. I was placed in a foster home. My caseworker said I had a few options(by this time Roe v Wade had passed but no self-respecting doctor would perform an abortion on a minor). I was still only sixteen and I was told I could have an abortion(too late, I was already at the end of my first trimester and I was Catholic so it was against my religious beliefs) I could raise the baby myself(I would just turn seventeen when he was born and had no marketable skills and no education), get married(yeah right-he was a year younger than me and a real jerk as all teenage boys tended to be) or relinquish the baby (everybody seemed to think that was the best thing for all concerned) I was given all these choices but none of them made a lot of sense to me. It was a pretty heavy situation for a sixteen year old girl to deal with.