Stacey Thomas
I’ve lived in South Bank all my life: I like it here and I can’t think I’ll move anywhere else unless I have to because they knock it all down. My mum lives round the corner and Paula, my mother-in-law, lives over the road. My dad moved away to Pembrokeshire a long time ago. I used to see him from time to time but it’s been a few years now that he hasn’t been up here.
I had just turned sixteen when I found out I was pregnant - I missed a period and did a pregnancy test. I was with my mum and when she saw the result she threw the testing kit at me. Now she likes being a gran and she helps me a lot. She was 17 when she had me, which isn’t so much older.
I didn’t enjoy school; I didn’t misbehave but it just didn’t interest me, except for PE, which I was good at. So when I was 15 I stopped going. They got hold of my mum and she had to attend loads of meetings about me and she did try to get me to go, but I wouldn’t. In the end she was fined two hundred and fifty pounds, which was taken out of her benefits: I think she paid two pounds a week. I was living at home then but soon after AJ was born I got a flat round the corner in South Bank and my boyfriend Popeye moved in with us.
I’ve been with Popeye since I was fourteen but we didn’t have sex until I was sixteen. We didn’t use contraception because I didn’t think I’d get pregnant; that’s not to say that I feel I got pregnant by accident - it’s that I didn’t think about it.
I like looking after AJ though sometimes I feel trapped when I can’t go out in the evening. When he’s old enough to go to nursery I’ll go back to college. I want to study hairdressing.