Tell Us Why. Junior Graphic Educatio Page

Getting pregnant is no child’s play. It has its own challenges even for adults. For teenagers, however, the risks are very high. This is because a teenager’s body is not developed enough to carry a pregnancy.
Apart from dropping out of school and missing the opportunity of realising your dream, it can expose you, as well as the unborn baby to danger.
Getting pregnant as an adolescent comes with serious challenges and responsibilities that you are not ready for. In the first place, because you are young and depend on others for survival, it is wrong for you to go against the norms of society by getting pregnant.

Besides, because you are not engaged in any meaningful employment, you may not have the means to provide for yourself. This is very serious because if you do not eat a well-balanced diet, you risk becoming malnourished or being anaemic and that will put your life as well as that of the baby in danger. That is why it is common to find children born to adolescent mothers underweight and malnourished.
Again, most adolescents do not attend antenatal clinics because they feel shy and also are afraid of the scorn they may face from disapproving adults. As a result, they are unable to get the right medications as well as the advice that would enable them and their unborn babies to grow healthily without any complication.

Not getting prenatal care increases the risks of nutrition-related problems for the baby, such as birth defects from the lack of essential nutrients.

Also because the adolescent girl is pregnant as a result of engaging in unprotected sex, there is the danger of contracting sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS.

Aside these pregnancy related complications of teen pregnancy, there are certain dangers adolescent girls are likely to go through during labour.

Girls who become pregnant at a very early age often have difficult deliveries because the pelvis is too small for the baby to pass through. When that happens, it can tear the lining between the vagina and the rectum, causing the medical condition known as obstetric fistula.

Obstetric fistula is a severe medical condition in which a hole develops in the birth canal following a long period of labour. It results in leakage of faeces and urine from the hole. People who develop fistula are often shunned by even their relatives because they smell.

According to a UNICEF report, the risk of dying in childbirth is five times greater for girls who give birth before age 15 than for women in their 20s and infants’ risk of dying within the first year of life is 60 per cent higher if the woman is younger than age 18 at the time of birth.

Women who have babies during their teen years are more likely to live in poverty because they are not engaged in any meaningful employment.

There are also the emotional aspects of teen pregnancy. Society does not expect teenagers to indulge in sex, therefore, if you get pregnant, they are often unable to forgive you.

That is why in some families, girls who get pregnant are driven away from home because it is considered a disgrace to the family. In some communities, you even become a subject of ridicule.

Therefore, as young girls and boys, stay away from pre-marital sex which can lead to teenage pregnancy and its associated complications.