We're sitting on the dusty gym floor during seventh period, talking about teen pregnancy.

"I'm pregnant," says Ashley, 18.

"I have a son," adds Carolyn, 19. "He's a year old."

They are just two of the dozens of pregnant or parenting teens at our high school. While the number of teenagers who get pregnant has steadily dropped over the past 10 years, inner-city schools like mine still have lots of teens roaming the halls who are pregnant or a parent before they graduate high school.

 

For some, it runs in the family.

"My aunt was 18 when she got pregnant," says Angie, who is now two-and-a-half months pregnant. Neither of their pregnancies was planned.

"It was at my boyfriend's brother's birthday party," she says. "We began to drink and got drunk. Then one thing led to another. I knew about protection, but we just didn't use it. Everything happened so fast. I wish I would've taken my time to think about it."

 

Looking for Affection

 

After school, when I arrive home, Adalgisa, a family friend, stops by. She is 29, but she got pregnant at 17. It was the hardest time of her life.

"It was an accident, because I was inexperienced and I was only 17," Ada remembers. "It was my first time and it was in a park. I was lonely, and for me that experience was like an escape from the loneliness."

Ada's father raised her, and no one ever talked to her about sex.

"I was looking for affection," she says. "Since I wasn't raised with my mom, I received love and affection from [my boyfriend], to ease my loneliness."

When Ada's father found out about her pregnancy, he understood.

"I felt very lonely, but I had my dad's support and I decided to keep the baby," she says.

Now, 12 years later, Ada looks back on her experience and says, "It brings confusion, since [teenagers] are so inexperienced. They want to do teenage things but mentally are not ready to be moms. And they're young. They've barely begun their lives."

As for the dad…

"He was never involved," says Ada. "That affected me a lot."

 

Scared and in Love

 

It is Monday night and my mom and I go visit another friend, whose daughter, Jenny, gave birth to a baby girl about a year ago. My mom and Jenny's mom chat in the living room, and I go hang with Jenny, whom I just met.

Jenny seems shy. I decide to break the ice by asking about her baby.

"So, I hear you have a baby," I say. "What's her name?"

"Kiara," she says. "She's a year and two months."

"Wasn't it scary? Getting pregnant?" I ask.

"I was scared," she answers. "But I was more afraid to find out how my mom would react."

Before Jenny became involved with her baby's father, Moses, she had never had a boyfriend. "He'd been a family friend for a long time," she explains. "His mom was close to my mom and to my aunts."

There was only one problem. She was 16; he was 27. In the beginning, Jenny's parents disapproved of the relationship, because of the age difference. But Moses talked to Jenny's parents and they reached a solution: They weren't allowed to be together without supervision.

But they still figured out a way to be alone. A few months later, Jenny was pregnant.

When she told Moses, he was scared. "He knew I was young and that he could get in trouble," she says. "I told him not to tell my parents, because I was scared." But after a month, Moses decided to tell them.

Jenny's father gave Moses two months to find an apartment for him and Jenny.

"Then I moved in with him. I was in love."

In addition to caring for a baby, cooking, and cleaning, she attends an academy in Paterson, NJ.

"I wake up around 6 a.m. to get ready [for school] and my boyfriend takes the baby to her grandmother, who takes care of her the whole day. Then he goes to work. I want to finish high school. But I have so many problems that sometimes I feel that I have to leave school."

When they first moved in together, Moses, who has a part-time job, was more helpful with the cooking and cleaning. But "now he says I'm not a little girl anymore."

Is marriage the next step?

"I don't know," Jenny says with a sigh. "He used to say that he wanted to marry me. Now it's like we are going different ways. Before everything was so nice, but now…I don't know."

"Having a baby can be a wonderful thing. I think I'm doing great as a mother to her," she says, adding that she doesn't regret having the baby, but she does regret being so young when she became a parent.

"I would like to go out [with friends], but she is my whole life now."