Normal recaps are like knitting a sweater: difficult, but rewarding. A “16 and Pregnant” recap is like wading into a septic tank with only leggings and flip-flops on. I take this bullet for you. So let’s see whose septic tank we’re wading into this week!
Jamie McKay is from Asheville, NC. She’s actually seventeen and pregnant. Her dad left when she was a baby, so her mother was actually a single mother as well, and has been looking forward to having her own life now that her two daughters are in their late teens. Ha ha, you were looking forward to it, Mother McKay. Now your daughter is going to assume you’ll help her raise her child.
Jamie is on student council, a straight-A student, and plans to be an X-ray technician when she graduates. What she actually says is that she’s going to major in radiation therapy when she goes to college, but I’m pretty sure she means community college. That’s a two-year degree at most. She’s not going to Duke, especially if the grammar and syntax on her Facebook page is any indication.
Anyway, their health class either talks about how the stork brings babies as a gift from Jesus or she cheated off someone for that A, because her boyfriend Ryan knocked her up. She says no one at her school can understand why they’re together, because he has:
- had multiple speeding tickets
- eyebrows that look like caterpillars
- a DUI
- a penchant for wearing wife-beaters as a shirt, not as an undershirt
- terrible amateur tattoos
We then move on to the obligatory producer-coached segments on how this all happened. Jamie and Ry-ry talk about how they got together. There was nothing in this conversation that leads me to believe they have ever had anything in common except cruising the main drag of Asheville. Jamie and her friends talk about how she got pregnant (hint: it involves a total lack of birth control).
Jamie and her mom talk about what happened when she told Mom. “I was pissed. I cried a bunch,” Jamie’s mom says. “I thought I could talk you out of [having a baby].” Moms are dumb. Just because your mother was a single mother and tries to explain to you that it’s tremendously difficult to raise a child on your own doesn’t mean you should listen, am I right? Olds. You will do a better job, Jamie. You are a special flower.
Jamie and Ryan have an awful conversation about what Ryan could be doing if he hadn’t knocked her up. “If you wasn’t pregnant, I could just move out,” he says. He is trying to avoid ill-advised tattoos and underage drinking, but it’s hard. “I still always manage to do somethin’ I shouldn’t be doin’.”
It’s like he has Tourette’s of the soul. Don’t laugh. I had it in my early twenties and the good men and women of Ft. Lauderdale could tell you some stories. I’m better now.
Ryan would like to take Jamie to all her doctor’s appointments, but he has court a lot. I’m not sure why Jamie doesn’t have a license, but her mom says that she’s going to have to rely on her for the next year. At her 34-week checkup, her ob-gyn asks her what she’s most worried about at this point. Is it breast-feeding? The pain of delivery? The stress of raising a child as a teenager?
“Stretch marks,” Jamie says. The doctor looks appropriately non-plussed, but does not punch her in the stomach and run screaming out of the room, so that medical training really paid off.
She meets her absentee dad in the park. He has a new wife and a child that is maybe seven years younger than ol’ Jamie. He didn’t call her on her birthday and found out about her impending motherhood on MySpace (who still uses MySpace? Old deadbeat dads and teenage moms, apparently). He does promise he’ll visit her in the hospital when she delivers, though. I’m going to go out on a limb here, put on my analyzin’ hat, and say Jamie has daddy issues, and is ready to give this another go-round with a new father and a new child. Good plans all around.
She goes to a carnival with her friends for one last good time before she’s shackled to a baby. If I were Jamie’s friend, I would have sprinkled some GHB on her funnel cake and alternated throwing her limp body on the Gravitron and then the Zipper until I changed her life, but her friends aren’t as dedicated as I am.
She has a baby shower. Ryan wears a pink shirt; Ryan’s mom is really cute and sweet and I again am left wondering how these parents end up with these children; Jamie’s dad doesn’t show. As this is all going on, Jamie is setting up her daughter’s spot at the high-school daycare (yes, they have one! It’s the South!) and arranging for a car seat on her school bus. Snark aside, at least they have these things for teenage mothers.
Ryan, Jamie, and her mother attempt to hammer out living arrangements for after the birth. Jamie’s mom doesn’t want them sleeping in the same room, which…really. We are locking the bank vault after the money’s been stolen (I just saw “Fast Five,” so I’m not thinking in terms of horses and barns).
So we finally get to the delivery. Ryan has not been answering his phone for the past couple days, and on the night she goes into labor, Jamie leaves several hundred messages on his phone with no answer. The next morning, Jamie’s still in labor, which is when Ryan cruises in, smelling of booze, looking like Charlie Sheen, and saying he “fell asleep.” Awesome.
Anyway, she’s having a difficult delivery and the medical team explains they may need to use forceps. A nurse asks her if she knows what forceps are. “Like pliers,” Jamie confidently replies. Wow. I hope she doesn’t think a vacuum is like a breast pump or her nipples are going to be super-sore.
Baby’s born, everyone cries. They name her Miah (pronounced MY-a. Sigh). Jamie sends Ryan’s hungover ass home because she’s rightfully rageful. Jamie’s dad shows up! I was actually happy about this. From the bottom of my black heart, I was happy that Jamie was able to get what she wanted from her father, just once, when it really mattered to her.
Jamie and her mother bring Miah (grr) home. After two days of radio silence, Ryan comes over fully expecting to be able to stay over. He and Jamie have a tearful fight, the summary of which is this: he wants to take the baby, Jamie is breastfeeding and doesn’t have enough milk to pump, he still wants to see his daughter, she says he was a douche for showing up for the birth hungover…they’re both sobbing and hyperventilating and it’s just not fun to watch. Ryan: I don’t get him. I think he likes the idea of his child, and there’s love there, but I’m not sure he has any reason or intelligence at all. Ugh. I wrote in my notes after this segment, “I feel dirty.” I do.
We learn something during this argument: Ryan’s name is not on the birth certificate. I believe this is Mother McKay’s idea, and in this case, probably a good idea, since Ryan wears straight-brimmed hats cocked to the side. I mean, because he has a DUI as a seventeen-year-old. Both.
Miah (gag) is a month old now. Jamie still hasn’t let Ryan come over or see the baby but she does go, briefly, to a Halloween party at his house so his family can see the baby.
Shortly thereafter, she goes back to school. Her first day back at school, she feels like everyone is staring and gossiping. They have a daycare on-site, so it’s surely not because she’s the only girl at school to have a baby. No: it’s because Ryan has been dating another girl since before she gave birth, and everyone but Jamie knows.
So that’s just great. We’re almost done here. I’m just going to soldier on, bravely, and finish this tawdry story.
Jamie meets Ryan in the park again, her favorite spot for conversations with deadbeat dads, and tells him she’s going through the court system to hammer out custody arrangements. During this conversation, she’s calm and collected, really sure of herself, and I kind of start to think maybe she’ll be an X-ray tech after all.
She finishes saying her piece and leaves Ryan crying in the park. The episode ends with her saying, “I thought me and Ryan would stay together…[he said] I’m gonna take care of you.” Oh, Jamie. Oh, J-dog. Never trust a boy with a sparse mustache and an underage DUI.
