The Reality of an Unplanned Pregnancy

In today's episode, Lauren gives us a glimpse into what it was like being pregnant her Senior Year of College and how hard it was to come to terms with her new reality of being a Mom. Join her bi-weekly as we discuss all things parenting as a Single Mom, dating and relationships, sobriety, and so much more. No topic is off the table and Lauren's ready to spill the tea. Welcome to therapy! It's Milf Season Baby!

Transcript

Hi lovely ladies! Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to pop on here and provide a little trigger warning. Today, we're going to be touching on binge drinking and diving into unplanned pregnancies. I wanted to acknowledge that not every woman is going to have the same experience and feel the same emotions that I faced when confronted with the realities of an unplanned pregnancy. This experience I tell is uniquely my own and it's my personal story. It does not reflect the experience that all women have. Lastly, I wanted to say, if you find yourself facing an unplanned pregnancy, you are not alone and the emotions you're feeling are valid. You are loved, you are cared for, and I am here for you and I'm supporting you. I love you, mama. You're a badass. Okay, hi. My microphone is on. My headphones are in. I'm in my comfy cozy blanket. I'm sitting on the floor. Essential oils are just flowing around my bedroom right now and I'm freaking ready. It's freaking milf season baby. Okay I wanted to get on today and give you a little insight as to who I am. If you didn't listen to my little intro episode, don't bother. My name is Lauren and I am a 24 year old single mom and I have a beautiful two-year-old daughter. So a little background, I went to a super small private school for my high school that completely wrecked my social skills and that is a entire other episode probably with my sister as a guest because it has been a time trying to work through having normal social interactions after going there, but I am so grateful for my education there because it helped me get to college. I went to Endicott and I graduated in 2021, Endicott Semester, and I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management, and man, college was a time. Good, bad, a lot, a lot of both, and we'll be talking a lot about that here on this podcast too. So currently I'm a bartender. I freaking love it. I bartend at one of the highest volume bars in the area that I currently live in and it's definitely the favorite job I've had so far. I've had a lot of jobs in hospitality from waitressing, serving, that would be the same thing as waitressing, bartending, event planning, all of it. Catering, I've been all across the board. But honestly like I'm really living the dream right now. I work three nights a week. I stay home with my daughter the rest of the time I never go into work before three unless I open on Sundays and that's at one so like Damn, I mean, I really can't complain about that. I'm really grateful for this job opportunity that I have bartending here I didn't think I'd be able to have a job where I got to spend so much time with my daughter and here I am. So we'll continue getting to know each other as I release episodes bi-weekly so I really wanted to go on to today's topic. Okay wait I also just need to like pause for a second and say I'm sick. I've had this terrible cough for like a week and a half. I can't seem to kick it so I'm sorry I sound a little more nasally than I normally will. It's kind of annoying so bear with me through that. So, the elephant in the room. Ah yes, the unplanned pregnancy. And no, before your mind even gets to thinking about asking this question, my daughter's father is not involved in our lives at all, at least for the time being. Who knows about the future? Clearly, our lives can take very different turns than we expected. Honestly, the amount of people that ask me these questions as soon as they find out I'm a single mom. I mean, it's truly shocking.

It's really no one's business anyway whether my daughter was planned or not. Definitely not anyone's business as to whether or not her dad's in the picture. Yet, it's one of the first things people ask me. I mean, I have no words for it. So how did I end up here as a single mom? Freaking let me know. Just kidding. Alright, so let me set the scene. It's senior year of college, you're freshly 21 and the height of your party girl era making up for all of the drinking that you couldn't do with your friends because the world was shut down for the past year due to the pandemic. Any elevated service at a party, it was mine. I'm not sharing. I will be dancing my ass off and hoping the entire fucking hockey team notices. Was I a cleat chaser? Chaser?

Chaser? Was I a cleat chaser back in the day, girls? Maybe. That girl that was obsessed with the hockey team, aka got called a puckslut by some bombs at a hockey game? Maybe I was. Am I still obsessed with hockey players? Yes. Is that my fault? No. But here we are. Ladies, if you know, you fucking know. The point is, in college, I was like every other drunk bitch. I did not know how to handle my alcohol. I was blacking out way too frequently and insisting I needed to be on the aux at every party I went to. I mean, how fucking annoying is that? I was that girl. So it's my freshman year. I'm bartending at my college bar. Cue preppy boy. Oh my god was this man freaking gorgeous. Like I said, I met him while I was working at my college bar. He was not an Endocott student. Long story short, we had a fling for four years. It was always off and on, but it really just boils down to that typical drunk consistent hookup buddy that we all have.

Well, I shouldn't say we all. I feel like, you know, it's kind of the college culture. Not everyone takes part in it. I definitely did. Did Preppy Boy's best friend joke that we would tell the story of how we met on our wedding day? Yes. Did we ever go out on a date? No. Was I very confused by what was going on between the two of us? Hell yes. Did I want to date this boy? Abso-frickin-lutely.

Did that ever happen? Nope. Did I indeed get pregnant after a full day of day drinking and other activities that we'll talk about maybe later on?

Yes. Is it funny? Absolutely not.

But, you know, you'll learn I laugh through things that aren't supposed to be funny. It's just how I cope. You know, reflecting back on college, definitely not prouder of the person than I was, especially during my junior and senior year. Those times were just freaking crazy. I mean, the amount that my friends and I and probably everybody was drinking because of COVID, like messing up so much of our college career. Oh my God, it was just outrageous. And saying some of these things out loud, like some of the stories I'm sure I'll tell, like it just sounds crazy, But it was my life then. I was so invested in coming off as that cool, hot party girl who could hook up, not get attached, and that's just simply not my reality. Took me three years after college to figure that out and a fucking lot of therapy and a few different therapists but I figured it out.

I will never forget the moment when I knew that I had to be pregnant. My period was a weekly and my college best friend and I had just gone to a massive house party at a place we called the swamp which was always so fun. Those were some crazy house parties for endocott standards because we weren't allowed to party on campus like people were still doing it but like you could get in serious trouble and these guys threw like these massive house parties and they got in trouble like the legit police but it was so fun like people would be like oh my god the cops are here, the cops are here and we would have to like run and hide in like someone's like fucking attic bedroom. It was just, it was crazy and I remember like drinking that night but in the back of my mind I was like I think I'm fucking pregnant like I shouldn't even be drinking like I was so torn and my best friend's boyfriend at the time drove her and I home from that party and And when he dropped us off, I got out of the car, wine bottle in hand, I fucking slammed the door and I exclaimed so loudly, think I'm fucking pregnant.

I just, I didn't even know how to handle it. I couldn't even fathom the idea. I remember like that night like drinking cautiously.

I just had such a strong intuition that I was pregnant. I just didn't even enjoy the party. I just kind of wanted to go home and I was like starting to freak out.

I wanna say it was the next day, keeping in mind this is like three years ago now. I wanna say it was that next day I took a pregnancy test after work, which felt a little ironic as I worked at a sports bar and the uniform was leggings and a sports bra. So here I am in my dorm room looking so cute after work, taking my pregnancy test, looking like a cute, sporty slut and I was on the phone with my sister.

Couldn't tell you what Lindsay was saying. What she was talking about, no fucking clue. I wasn't listening.

I just remember interrupting her and saying, "'It's positive,' which naturally she replied with, "'What's positive? "'I'm pregnant,' blacked out the rest of the night. "'Couldn't tell you what happened.' "'All I know is there were a lot of fucking tears.

"'I mean, to be honest, I was in hysterics, absolute hysterics. All I knew is that Lindsay was being so supportive of me. Thank god this girl had training through her college's like res life program. It was a catholic college so they like trained their resident ministers on how to deal with situations like this especially like unplanned pregnancies. Thank god because your girl was freaking panicking. The way that my entire world change in that instant. Honestly, it just seems so surreal at this point. I was in such a daze after finding out I was pregnant. I was fucking 20. I was supposed to be drinking every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, God, probably every day of the week at that point until we graduated in May.

It was only February. I realized I was going to be pregnant for an entire semester. Like that felt like an eternity at that time. It was only what, three months? Four months max? But thinking about an entire semester pregnant, oh my god, I started spiraling. I couldn't even fathom it in my mind to accept that I was pregnant. Honestly, there were even a few times where I still went out and partied and drank some full well knowing I was pregnant.

I fucking hate admitting that out loud and I still deal with so much shame and guilt for doing that but I was truly having the hardest time coming to terms with my new reality. That I was going to be a mother. That I was now a mother. I wasn't just a college student that could drink their sorrows away, drink their happiness away, whatever it was. I was a fucking mom. I was fucking pregnant. I also just wanted to say that if you've been in a similar situation before where you know that you're pregnant and it's very early on and you decide to drink or smoke whatever that vice is, you are not alone. It can be so hard to accept that you're pregnant, especially when it's an unplanned pregnancy and I clearly, like I just said, made those unwise decisions as well. But when I went to my first OBGYN appointment, I disclosed everything to her.

I told her I had drank a couple times and it was heavy drinking. It wasn't just casual. And she assured me that everything should be okay, that it was still so early on in my pregnancy. Like we're talking, I was like not even, you know, nine weeks pregnant. It was like very, very early. Um, not that that is an excuse at all, but learning to let go of this shame has not been an easy process and it is something that I am still working with every day. I think about it all the time but if this is you, girl, you're not alone. So not only did I have to change my mindset at this point, I started feeling the physical effects of being pregnant so quickly.

I was taking five classes, I was working three to four nights a week at this sports bar, which I freaking loved working there. But it wasn't long before I started skipping class, I needed more sleep, I felt nauseous, I was having so much trouble keeping up with my homework assignments, I already don't like studying, I wasn't studying for any tests, I went from being like a A-B plus student to like C's and D's and honestly I didn't give a f**k. I was like, I'm having a baby. I'm literally having a child in nine months. As long as I graduate college, that is all that I care about. I want to get to that stage, graduate, no one is going to ask me, hey Lauren, welcome to this interview. Now what was your GPA? No, no one gives a flying fuck.

Like no. So I was like, this is it. I put my head down and I actually started working more at the bar and I started saving all of my money for my birth. I started putting away as much money as I could. Hospital bills, anything baby related like I knew I was gonna need that cushion. So I honestly put school on the back burner. I obviously graduated. I did graduate. But I just I couldn't get myself to care about getting that A because I was like holy shit like this is reality. I'm having a kid, I need a job, like, oh man, I can't even remember how long it was before I told my friends. I was really trying to live out my normal college life until I realized I just couldn't do it anymore. I was so full of shame that I was pregnant, I was so embarrassed that this had happened, and I was so fucking scared of what my parents were gonna say, what my family was going to think how the hell I was going to raise a child on my own. My god I cried myself to sleep for months. I would cry every day in the shower too. I literally couldn't stop fucking crying. I thought that having a baby was going to ruin my life. I remember so many nights just laying in bed crying myself to sleep. I had been offered this amazing opportunity as an event planner at a Country Club right in Salem. My sister was planning to move to Salem with me we were gonna get an apartment all my friends were gonna be living in Salem like I thought that I had my life fucking planned out for the next couple years and this totally ruined that and I couldn't I couldn't come to terms with that. I just I cried I cried I cried so much and I remember for so many nights just crying in my bed, wondering if my roommate, who was supposed to be my best friend, could hear me. She never asked if I was okay, but I'm assuming she heard. Maybe she didn't, but I mean, our beds aren't very far apart. I think it's kind of hard to miss. And I just felt so alone. And this is where, in hindsight, I made one of my biggest mistakes. I wasn't allowing myself to have a supportive community. My friends who I knew would have been so excited for me and were going to be so excited and supportive of me because I was so scared about what they were going to think. I was spinning this narrative in my mind. I would literally come up with scenarios, like literally scenes in my head of how various people in my life were going to react and god it was so bad. I always envisioned them being like how could you do this? like how are you gonna do this? like oh my god like so negative but that's not reality.

the only terrible reaction I had to telling somebody that I was pregnant was my daughter's father. everyone else was so excited and so happy for me. it's just it's so hard like I shouldn't have allowed myself to spin those narratives in my head but I fucking did. But I should have allowed myself to open up to my friends sooner and tell them the truth instead of withholding this crucial aspect, this crucial detail of my life that felt like it was turning my entire world upside down all around like I would it was bad. I was spiraling and it's honestly so crazy to think back on how scared I was and for so long too because I couldn't imagine my life without my daughter now and I know that sounds so cliche but after having her that college version of myself that was so scared so petrified it seems so distant and so far from the person that I am now I truly feel like once I had my daughter, like, it was almost a rebirth for me, because so many aspects of my life have changed since college.

I say now, I don't even recognize the person I was in college as to who I am now. It's completely two different people. And my daughter, she is the biggest blessing in my life.

I have come so far from the person that I was in college, and I'm really, really proud of that. I was so scared to tell my closest friends, even though I knew they were gonna be supportive. I was so afraid of that judgment, but why?

They were so supportive of me. They were so excited to have a community baby. Like, they couldn't wait to meet her and raise her and help me.

But I wasn't allowing myself to see that and to feel that. I was so scared that people at college would find out. I literally thought that you could tell that I was pregnant and I wore sweater dresses, I wore regular dresses, jumpsuits, like anything to hide my body when I maybe looked a little bit bloated.

I literally remember one time when I had told my friend that I was pregnant and I went to one of his parties and I was wearing this like really hot Victoria's Secret top with these pants and I can't remember how pregnant I was at that point, like to me it was very noticeable. I noticed those changes in my body but he was like, god damn you're pregnant you still look so hot like you can't even tell like we just look at ourselves we're so judgmental. I thought everyone on campus oh my god you could tell oh my god they knew they just knew. Nobody gave a flying fuck. Nobody. Nobody noticed. That was just another narrative that I was spinning in my head. Yet even after I graduated, when I had a job as an event planner for a hotel, there were so many times I was so embarrassed that I was pregnant and by that point like it was extremely noticeable. I remember I was like should I put on a fake ring? Should I put on a wedding band? Buy a fucking ring so that people think I'm married? And then I'm like shouldn't I be proud of the fact that I am having this baby that I know that I'm going to be a good mom but I just couldn't think that way. I wasn't allowing myself to think that way. And there are going to be those people that are going to judge you. They are deeply rooted in their traditional values, you know, having to be married, whatever the case may be. But I really think that we're blessed to be living in such a time where that traditional value, it's not fully upheld and maybe that's not a good thing, maybe it is, I don't know. But I know now when I meet single moms or pregnant women that are single, not married, I'm like, hell fucking yes. Like, you can do this, you fucking got this. I'm not looking at them, judging them or I'm like, Oh my god, I can't believe she's pregnant. I wonder what happened there Like absolutely not and I feel like that's the case with the majority of people But we just spin this narrative in our head It's it's honestly just crazy the people that are gonna judge you they're gonna judge you and you can't change that You can't change their opinion and what matters is that you know the truth You know that you're a fucking badass mom that you're gonna be a fucking MILF. I mean, come on It's more likely that they're admiring the fact that you're going to be raising this baby.

I really, I truly believe that. I kind of want to shift gears and I want to talk about this story that means so much to me. Before I got pregnant, a few months before, I had been kind of hooking up with one of my friends and he means a lot to me, still does.

And I really started to like him a lot, actually. I really wanted to date him. And I remember he told me a story.

Him and I went out to watch the sunset. And we went to the ocean. Our school was by the ocean.

And we climbed up on all these rocks. And we sat down. And this was well before I was pregnant.

He told me a beautiful story that his mom got pregnant. her senior year of college and was dating his dad and decided to keep their baby even though she was so scared. She was in college, couldn't, you know, believe she was having a baby and that baby was him. And that story really impacted me at the time and I thought, wow, what a strong woman choosing to have her baby, raising such a good man, he is such a good man and I really, I've always admired him since I first met him and she did it and then I got pregnant and I was like holy shit you know I thought I really thought my life was over what was I gonna do how was I gonna raise this baby and I just kept thinking about his mother and how if she could do it, I could do it.

And look at how amazing her son turned out. And I know that I can raise my own baby to be that way. You know, I should probably like write her a letter and tell her how much this story impacted me.

Now that I'm sitting here and like, it's just always stuck with me and maybe saying it out Maybe you're listening thinking that doesn't really sound that impactful. I don't know but it did for for me and I don't think it was a coincidence that he told me that story and was very vulnerable about it and Then I got pregnant not long after that and I was able to look up to this woman that I've never met I still have never met her But really helped get me through my pregnancy because I got to see her own son, one of my best friends, as an example and that really really really meant a lot. Okay that was everything I want to talk about today and first I want to say thank you if you've made it this far. It seriously means a lot. I am so excited about all these topics that I brainstormed. I have over 50 episode ideas already. I'm so freaking excited. I also want to say thank you for bearing with the changes in audio. I actually recorded this on a voice memo and then I connected my microphone to GarageBand and realized that GarageBand sounds way better. So I'm going to be doing that on GarageBand from now on.

If anyone knows how to do this and wants to send me like tips, I would love that because I'm winging it completely. Some of the other things I'm going to be talking about on this podcast are obviously parenting, what it's like being a single mom, parenting as a single mom, dating and relationships, dating after having my daughter. It's been a whirlwind and I have some pretty funny stories to tell about that. Unfortunately, none that are successful so far. You know, we'll see what the future holds. I'm also a sober girl, so I'm going to be talking about sobriety and how hard it's been to get to the point that I'm at now.

And I have a bunch of other ideas of friends that could come on and talk about their lives and things that they're going through. And I also plan on talking about therapy. I've had a lot of crazy shit happen in my life and I have been through three years of therapy so far and it was a journey finding a therapist and yeah I've got a lot to talk about when it comes to therapy. but if you want to follow my podcast on Spotify, if you like what you heard today, that would be amazing. That would like literally make my day. And if you wanted to follow me elsewhere, my Instagram is Lauren Kay, that's K-A-Y 100, and that's about all the social media I do. So I really hope you guys enjoyed this podcast, and ladies, welcome to fucking milf season. I can't wait for what comes next and I'll talk to you ladies in two weeks.