Girl thinks she's pregnant, what am I supposed to do?

[rodi]

Hi kierc, i read it, vey american so i don't think i'll be able to call all of those numbers or contact any of those organizations, but i got the rest i think, no shaking the baby, trying to make connection with baby mother at least cordial, control anger, not starting using substanzen, not having another baby, try to be present, be aware of my rights. Sounds obviosu but maybe its harder to put in practice than jsut think? Car centric, i can't drive yet, i won't be able to drive for 3 to 4 years, so i don't think it'll be my job to get a baby car seat, sadly no tips on dealing with bad family members on the baby mom side.

Theres a part that says my body will change, though heather had said the baby cann me not affect, i've noticing my body change i'm losing muscle definition and feeling weaker, like i'm losing weeks of progress, and its not losing weight im the same weight so im increasing body fat percentge, and i havent even thought about girls or dating in weeks. Feeling tired, i think i'm shedding hair too, baby is definiivel doign something to me, if not directly.

As for how things have been, shit. mostly goign from school to home to school, dad keeps making me do things, sunday he took me to golf, monday to bjj class, yesterday too, we went to dine out a day, so i'm not isolated. At school everyone is wondering what is happening to me and i can see they speculating and it makes me feel like shit.

biggest thing though is that her parents are taking it to court for pregnancy support, papers dropped monday and dad is dealing with it with lawyer and stuff, he's angry he wanted to deal it with between them, not courts, theres no proof im the baby dad they are using messages we talked that were supposed to be private and otehr stuff, cant do the paternity test yet. i don't even havean income.i have barely even seen her these days.

i full ike things keep getting worse and more dangerous to me and i can't do anything just let things happen, so thingsa re really shitty.

[Heather]

Hey there, rodi. I have an ask out in my circles to try and find people who were teen dads, but so far I have no takers. I'm still looking though, so I'll be sure to send anyone I find to this thread when I find them. I do think it would be really beneficial to you to talk to other people who have been where you are who you aren't related to.

As you know, a fetus growing in someone else's body can't change your body, just like someone else's cancer can't make you feel sick. But as I mentioned before, the stress of all this absolutely can take a toll, and things like hair loss, fatigue, and your body not responding to muscle-building like it did before are all things stress can do. How's it going with that therapist? Do they feel like a good fit for you? Are you feeling supported by them?

I also really hope the adults in your life can get better at managing their own emotions so that you feel the impact of them less: you're carrying a lot of stress around that, too.

I do think it's actually a very good thing that her parents moved child support issues to the court.

It's very clear that few to none of the adults involved in any of this have the capacity to keep a cool head and manage themselves in such a way where trying to work it out between them would go very well. So far, everyone's behavior just seems to show that. The courts, on the other hand, have to keep it together and keep cool, and are bound by rules of law in a way that individuals are not. Courts around the world also generally do a good job protecting minors, which both you and Marcela are, and laws around all of this also have guardrails that individual agreements might not. I think that you're actually going to be much better protected with this being in the hands of the court than you would have been if this was about negotiations between your dad and hers. I just feel like it is almost a given that that would have gone very badly and potentially made things between your families and you and she more difficult, not less.

I can understand you feeling like things are getting worse and worse. I'm sorry it's so uncomfortable for you at school and at home, and that you feel what sounds like an impending sense of dread. It makes sense you're feeling all of these ways: it's not like this isn't major, it really, really is. In terms of how it is at school, does she go to the same school as you? I ask to see if you might want to think about if this might feel better for you if you didn't have to hide out about this. I suspect that -- if she agrees to that or wants that for herself, too, which she might -- at first it might actually feel worse instead of better, just because a lot of gossip about you en masse always feels bad, but in a relatively short period of time, it might wind up feeling a lot better. I don't think there's a right or wrong here, just what feels like it might feel best to you.

I hear you about some of what that resource offered you being very American: it was the best thing I could find with at least some comprehensive information at the time. I did recently find a South American-specific resource, though, for adolescent fathers: you can see information from/about them here https://www.instagram.com/institutopapai/ and here https://institutopapai.blogspot.com/ Honestly, given your grandfather is an obstetrician, I'd also expect that he knows some more about more local resources, and if not him, then the therapist you have been seeing might be another good resource.

I'm out for the rest of the day, but I will be back in the morning briefly and can check back in with you again then if you like. <3

[rodi]

I'm still seeing them, don't know if it is working, might be going aswell as it can go.

I dont like it going to court, because there's not even confirmation that's my baby and things just keep escalating and i don't know where it will end.

We got to different schools and i don't want people to know since its not even sure i'm the father, i read that you don't even anounce a pregnncy in the first trimester. What if the baby ends up not beign mine and everyone thought i was having one?

Thanks for that one, though it's an instagram page for a for the feministboard in a university in northeastern brazil and they dont have much of a national presence, they're on the other side of the country. i will create an instagram, theres a law saying i can't have one but i'll do anways, they might not be able to help me but they might know someone closer. Tge psychologist says shes the support and i did ask grandpa and he said he's not aware of any group with a focus . the group you showed has a creepy video about teen dads and it includes 20plus year olds as teen dads which is unhelpful. im starting to think i'm alone, for some reason, from what i understand is that most just dont care, theres my dad but the main issue was what was done to him. Our situations aren't the same, he was a victim i was stupid.

So i either train myself not to care,

Do you mind if i chagne subject a bit, since not much progress can be done in dealing with the baby situation, but you said many times my dad isn't doing a good job, i will try not to be too defensive but why is that? He works so hard, i'm not tryign to bear the weight for him, i'm just trying to not add to what he already carries.

[Heather]

You and I have talked about this before, but I just want to remind you that it seems very, very unlikely you are not the person who she became pregnant with. Between the timing, her telling you it was you, and the fact that I am sure if she had any doubt in her mind it was you, she 1000% would not be putting herself through the stress that it seems the way all the adults in the mix here have been behaving (and how you did initially), it seems very clear to me this pregnancy is due to sex you two had. I know it's so hard to accept that and very appealing to imagine another scenario, but I really think you and your family need to accept that is is almost certain the paternity here is yours. I think where all of this ends, from the sounds of things, is that Marcela is most likely going to have a baby, and from the sounds of things so far, she is planning to parent it and at a minimum, will be seeking some financial support from you and your family, if not other kinds of engagement and support. I just don't think being in denial about any of this is doing you or anyone else any favors.

I'm sorry the resources I shared weren't useful and included content that bothered you. 20-year-olds who are Dads often became so in their teens, so I am not sure I am understanding that objection, but I get that you want something different. You're not alone in this, but it is pretty uncommon for people to become parents this young, period, so yeah, finding other people and resources is not easy. I do hope though, that at least, maybe your grandpa, especially since he is local, can maybe look a little more for some like we have for you, and I hope has some luck. Unfortunately, one of the issues we tend to run into when it comes to resources expressly for men is that unlike resources for women and nonbinary people, which women and nonbinary people tend to invest themselves in making, an awful lot of men have not similarly invested themselves in creating things to help their fellow men. I will keep looking for you, of course, too.

I'm not so sure this next conversation is going to be particularly beneficial to you, but I also want to answer questions you ask.

My central issue with the adults in your life and this, so far, your Dad included is that it sounds like no one is working very hard to manage their own feelings and keep you from being overly exposed to them. Quite frankly, even that you have had to grow up with the burden of knowing how you got here suggests a real lapse in judgment on the adults in your life part: that is something I wish you had been more protected from and could have only learned as an adult if and when that was information you yourself were seeking out. That alone is a giant burden to put on a child, and I'm so sorry you have had to live with it for however long you have.

Part of the job of any adult who is parenting (or grandparenting, or otherwise helping to raise) a young person is working hard to keep our own stresses and burdens off of you, because we ideally have skills and resources and supports and emotional maturity you don't yet -- because in our development to become responsible adults we have worked on those things -- as well as life experience managing stress you don't. Plus, the person in your family who absolutely has the biggest stress and struggle with this is you: not your Dad or anyone else. You are the one under the most strain, so it's vital any adults involved are keeping that in front of mind and managing their own stuff as best they can, and with each other's help, so that they can do their best for you.

It's clear to me when I listen to you that you feel responsible for the feelings of the adults in your life. But none of us can control what feelings anyone else has, and it's not your job as someone's child to try. I'd hope you are getting that message from the adults in your life but it doesn't sound like it (and I also really hope that changes: all of this is going to be hard enough on you just taking responsibility for yourself and your own feelings).

I have also heard you voice a lot of the adults in your life bringing their own agendas to this, like your father's spouse saying she might want this baby, for instance and kind of looking to get her own wants met by this situation. What I look for when I am looking to see if parents and other adults in a child/young person's life are doing right by them is their centering the needs of that young person, not their own. I'm looking for a lot of active listening, resource hunting and gathering and sharing, and a lot of making sure they are not doing things without also engaging you in them so that you have all the agency you can when it comes to things that directly impact you. I just feel like I keep not seeing a lot of those kinds of things. I do also want to remind you that while I am absolutely sympathetic to the fact that your father came to fathering you, one of his children, by way of sexual abuse, that being a sexual abuse and assault survivor -- again, this is something true for me and many, many people -- absolutely creates more challenges for us, but it does not make us incapable of things other people who are not survivors are capable of. We can all do healing work, however hard it can be, and many of us have. <3

I'm not going to be around again from the rest of today until Monday, just FYI.

[rodi]

I know it's likely mine.

She told me she only ever had sex with me and dad also thinks the baby is mine. I'm not in denial, i don't know how to explain, i need it to be not my child, but i think it is. I know my reaction was bad, i wish I could just say its mine, i'll take care of it, but a baby is too much and maybe i'm just an asshole. I know she wants to keep the baby too and she will want me to be part of its life, but it's difficult for me because i also want my own life and that's selfish because its likely i made this baby. It's mu fault, i knew this could happen.

I'm scared of her, i talked to the therapist about it, because it's not the first time we were together, we started as friends, her parents are a lot so she'd talk to me and that evolved into thingsm ore intimate, but that was before and she always wanted to date me but i didn't, so when i started dating again we stopped, until this year when i was upset with my ex-girlfriend and this all happened. I think she wants something more from me and i don't know what it is. i know its a misogynisitc thought to think that hse's having a whole baby to hurt me. When we were still talking, she'd go from demanding i take the baby out to planning a life with the baby and me. I know it sounds like stupid relationship drama, but i feel like theres a lot at stake here, at least for me.

Sorry if i made it sound like the resource you sent me was bothering me, i was just referring to this video with creepy clowns they made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZPEIpie_I its not that i was bothered or that it was unhelpful it was jsut weird, their accent is a bit heavy to understand and i know you don't speak portuguese at all, but there's skits with mime or clowns and that's what i think is creepy. in that video, they highlight a 23 year old together with 16 year old dads and even the youngest is older than me.

I want to say that i didnt grow up knowing what happened to my dad, i didn't find out until i was 13 and i pieced things together by myself, they never told me, dad would rather i would never have learned it. I think its worse, i wish i knew before, i had the right to know but they kept it from me, would have been easier for everyone too, wouldn't have asked why i dont have a mom so many times when i was younger, i would have been nicer to dad knowing he was going through so much. When i found out and had a therapist talk to me about that, before this all happened, i was told i was framing it wrong, that it wasn't my fault, that my dad chose and loved me and didn't hold what was done against him on me, and that's true, but no one seems to understand that thats not what bothers me, what makes me angry and mad is what i do things that makes things worse, given the price everyone had ot pay for me to even exist i should be put down for being anything less than perfect, but keep fucking it up, not the best grades but its passable, getting int a fight, losing a comp, not doing the best at the gym, coaches say its ok you got silver or bronze or whatever, or getting a girl pregnant, and he wastes money on therapy, he wastes energy on trying to help me because he loves me, but he shouldn't have to, i should be better, by doing the things i did i'm worse the woman who did things to him, because they could cut contact with her but not with me, and dad would be worse because he loves me, i can't even tell a therapist how i really feel cause they will misunderstand and tell dad and he'll think he's failing. That's the problem, i'm not carrying anyone's burden, i am failing in not being a burden.

Men don't have support groups, i understand that, not for things like this which is enterily my fault. Dad had because it was done to him. What if my mistake is hoping for help, stressing dad for my mistakes, even you heather migth think you could help someoen who deserves more, not someone who got himself into a problem and isn't properly grateful, you and your volunteers and staff do good work that ends up wasted on me. i should've been a man, that's why there's no group, becuase is undeserved.

My father's wife doens't want my baby, she is having one of her own, if my dad wasn't stressed enough, i dont even know what she thinks of me going through this, she's still upset my little brother is a boy 5 years after, if i have a girl and she another boy she might start hating me. and dad, the problem is that he centers too on my needs and not on his own, so he ends up getting spent and depressed and thinking he's failing me, he should nto be spending too much energy on me, at his own detriment, becuse i got here due to my own actions, i am a leech worse than the woman who gave birth to me but he's too carign to see that.

have a good weekend, no need to explain yourself to me, i'm getting this underservedly and for free anyways, my head is not in the right palce anyways, i need to cool off for a while