The Baby Bump is In.

While surfing the Internet the other day, this caught my eye and left me feeling very unsettled.

The newest fashion among schoolgirls is getting knocked up, according to one pregnant 14-year-old whose four friends are also expecting.

Upon reading this I had an instant flash-back.

I had just moved back to the States.  I was newly thirteen.  Finally a teenager.  I was going into the eighth grade in a new school, in a new home.  I had all the hope in the world that this was going to be one of the best things in the world to happen to me.  My first day of school was unsettlingly awkward, being the new kid.  I got lost countless times, couldn't open my locker and walked into the men's bathroom thinking that having urinals in the loos was an American thing.  Yes, I was naive.  Very naive.  It wasn't really a bad thing, but it wasn't fantastic.  I remember looking at an article in a magazine and some kid pointing at a picture of a leaf and telling me that it was a Marijuana leaf.  I didn't actually know that it came in leaves.  I actually didn't know that you could grow it.  I was naive.  It was a big culture shock.

But the one thing I will never forget on that first day, was driving through the High School after school.  Our school bus picked up a couple High Schoolers.  As I sat on the bus and stared out my window, I saw one of the scariest things I had ever seen in my life.  I saw girls pushing prams with babies in them.  Those couldn't possibly be theirs...could they?  They were.  I counted about six girls with babies.  These girls were only a few years older than me.

I sat on the bus mortified.  When I got home, I sat with my mum and told her.  I remember saying, 'Mum, its disgusting...they have babies.'  I think what terrified me the most was the idea that people my age, actually were having sex.  Children.  Kids were having babies.

I held this view well into high school.  I was disgusted by teachers that would coo over their pregnant students and their newborns.  I remember sitting in Health class listening to my teacher talk about how bad it was that some schools provide free contraceptives (condoms) to students.  I chimed in with, 'Obviously they don't do that at this school.'  I was a huge abstinence advocate when asked about the subject.  In my opinion, having a kid was just stupid, and it was your fault too.  Don't do the deed if you can't face the consequences.  I got in trouble in Health class for refusing to write a paper on what I would do if I got pregnant.  I told my teacher it would never happen to me, so I would not write the paper in that format.

I hated going to the grocery store with my toddler brother.  He would sit in the cart and I would watch him and be approached by people that would tell me how adorable my son was.  Eww.  There's nine years between us...that's disgusting.  Its disgusting that that was actually acceptable.

When I moved back to China the beginning of my Junior year, a friend of mine from the UK was telling me about how her circle of friends back home excluded her because she was still a virgin by the age of 16.  When we turned 17 she was angry that she still held her V-card.  I told her I was proud to still have mine.  In an age where girls are losing it right when they hit puberty, pride should be taken in the fact that a girl still has her virginity.

In my opinion, no one is ready to have a child at those ages.  You're still a child.  Talk about a major corruption of innocence.

I find it sad that sex is no longer a sacred act, rather an awkward tumble in the back of a car.  Its no longer an act committed by two people so in love, its a race to see who can get it first.

If only that was taught in health class.