All right! This week was “A Very Special Episode” featuring The Worst Non-Teen Mom In The World! We’ve got our hip waders on for this Very Special septic tank, and I’ll pause a minute for you to do the same. It’s really long, so settle down with a mood-altering substance; you will need it. The theme of this episode: “What I Don’t Even.”
We’re going to go light on the facts this week because the show was an hour and a half. So: Kayla, from Minnesota, sporty, baby daddy’s Mike, been together two years, knocked up the summer before senior year.
Kayla has been anorexic since age 13, when she was hospitalized. So there’s that. That’s the fly in the teen pregnancy pie, the horrible in this hoedown. Now, there are many, many reasons to perhaps not have a child in your teens, but I think struggling with a mental illness for the past four years need not be one! Neither do Kayla and her mom.
Her mom, Deb, is just the best. We’ll see why later, but take it from me: she earned that #1 Mom mug. Anyway, ol’ Deb was a teen mom too, and Kayla’s dad isn’t in the picture, which in no way either empirically or anectdotally leads to teenage pregnancy. Mom does have a boyfriend, though, one she really likes enough to frequently leave her anorexic teenage daughter unattended for.
What was mom most scared of after finding out Kayla was pregnant? That she wouldn’t keep it. But Kayla had sex (without any thought of birth control, natch) with Mike on his 101 Dalmatians sheets (I didn’t make that up, I SWEAR) for his birthday, so this is a special, special belated birthday gift that Kayla can’t bear to return, so to speak.
Since Kayla’s mom is with her own boyfriend all the time, having sex on his Aladdin sheets (I did make that up), Kayla has a lot of sleepovers with her girl friends. Also, Deb has allowed Mike to move into their house to help when the baby comes. There are the obligatory producer conversations, and what we mainly learn from this is that Kayla is starving herself and hates how fat she looks now that she’s pregnant. As in she skips meals to stay skinny, has only gained 12 lbs at her 6-month checkup, and feels that people look at her and think she’s just fat, when she’s actually just a skinny girl with a basketball taped to her belly.
They find out the baby’s a boy. They are deciding between Colby, Ashton, Preston, Warren, and Trent, and these are all totally unsurprising trendy names, but I gave her points for no unintentional misspellings or the use of “Junior.” They decide on Preston. I was rooting for “Trent”; if I had a baby when I was a teenager it would have been named Trent Reznor Nerd and it would have been so awesome.
Since the Debster is such a good mom she can mom from her boyfriend’s house, Kayla and Mike discuss what they might need to get before the baby comes. This is basically like my two stupidest dogs trying to forecast next week’s weather. Mike says that baby purchases are “just material stuff” and that “the baby’s not going to be here for another four months.” For sure! Only establishment yuppies obtain “clothes” and “diapers,” man! We could make a high chair out of Elmer’s Glue and our sweaty old Arcade Fire shirts! We have four whole months to come up with “bottles” or “a plan”!
So they go to price baby stuff, and they are just lost. I mean, I don’t know how many diapers a newborn goes through either, but I’m the poster child for forced sterilization, but they don’t know and no one seems to be giving them a tiny little hint. Even like a scavenger hunt where the prizes are parenting advice would have been fun for their respective parents to get together. “Oh, I found another note under the oak tree! It says ‘A baby sleeps in a large basket called a crib.’ Write it down, Kayla!”
So, confused and in need of guidance, Kayla plans a meeting with Debbers at a restaurant, presumably close to Deb’s ghost boyfriend’s house (for someone she spends so much time with, we never learn his name or see him). Deb is here to help. She knows Kayla needs help and guidance! Has Kayla considered going to a support group for teen moms? You know, so Deb doesn’t have to meet her daughter at a restaurant when she could be making pottery with ghost boyfriend? Debdebdeb. I don’t think that’s what Kayla wanted to hear. Just because you likely had a hand in your mentally ill daughter’s choice to keep the child doesn’t mean, like, you have to talk to her, does it? Sure hope not. Deb says, “I think it’s all going to fall into place. Something like this you can’t plan.”
I think I know how everyone here got into this lovely life they have. That’s a good motto. Plans, schmans. You can’t possibly know when you’ll have your baby or even what you might need! Human gestation guidelines and knowledge of what you needed to raise your child can in no way predict what might happen to Kayla. She might give birth at 22 months to a bouncing baby elephant who eats rainbows! Who can tell? NOT DEB.
So, there’s more worrying about her weight and more worrying about school; Kayla thinks she’ll go back to school a week after having the baby because Mike’s working part time at the mall, and I had a job, I had a girl, I had something going mister in this world….Sorry. Actually those are partial lyrics to Springsteen’s “Downbound Train.” We are, though, on a downbound train, so let’s keep chugging along!
The Debster, Minnesota’s Mom of the Year, promises to spend a little more time with her pregnant juvenile and have a girls’ night. But wait! The Ghost got 2 extra Twins tickets! For Kayla and Mom? Nope, no Kaylas allowed. Deb’s gotta jet off to the Twins game, because the Minnesota Twins are the ’92 Bulls of 2010 Minneapolis and they only play three games a year, so tickets are hard to come by! The words “I have a life too” were petulantly uttered by “Parenting” Magazine’s #3 on “10 Parents to Watch,” Deb.
Fun facts interlude!
- The regular season of baseball is approximately the length of an entire pregnancy
- Unless the Twins are playing and likely destroying the White Sox this game definitely sucked (GO SOX ANYWAY!)
- Deb probably should never have had a child
- Seriously, it’s way harder to get pregnant than it is to go to a Twins game
We’re back. So since Kayla’s not anorexic or self-conscious enough (she’s eating one meal a day and that is a nutritious blend of Nilla Wafers and water), her friends decide to cast her belly. While this is going on, Kayla begins to get very lightheaded and dizzy. Her friends call the doctor and he tells them to bring her to the hospital, where they give her fluids and a good lecture on how one must eat when making a child.
She and her mom go to a nutritionist, who points out that it might be good for Kayla and Deb to eat nutritional meals together. Nah, Deb says, she’s certainly going to eat more unsupervised. All together, guys: “What I Don’t Even.”
And if you’re tired of saying that, just stop reading. I was going to just repeat those four words three hundred more times but I have to tell you what actually happens. Kayla wakes up one night after 40 weeks of pregnancy soaking wet. Has Mike wet the bed? Did she knock over a glass of water? Well, Kayla’s heard that at 40 weeks you can have a baby especially after your water breaks. But she’s not sure, and thankfully Deb’s home this night to consult. Deb’s verdict: nothing to see here. Go lay back down and see if you feel better, Deb says.
Thankfully, Kayla and Mike decline to take Dr. Deb of Hollywood Upstairs Medical School’s advice and go to the hospital, where she has baby Preston. There, they teach Mike how to change diapers and Kayla how to breastfeed. Moms and people who have ever known a mother, yours or someone else’s: I bet you don’t know if she’ll be successful at breastfeeding!
Spoiler alert: She is not successful, because she is skipping meals immediately after a Cesarian section to give birth to a child that depends on her caloric intake for sustenance. I’m jamming right now to my remix of “What I Don’t Even” as I type. Anyway, Mother “Teresa” Deb said she’d take a week off, but with Kayla now having to stay home from school for 6 weeks due to major surgery and Mike only working part-time, they’ll figure it out, right? Deb says right.
Kayla meets a friend for lunch with one-week-old Preston. I was left wondering if Neonatal Nurse Deb told her it was super-fine to bring a child with no basic immunity and no vaccinations to the germiest place outside a crack house. Anyway, Kayla and her friend have a big chuckle about crying babies in a restaurant, and so did I, because I love it both as a former restaurant employee and as a patron! Can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet music, especially when your baby isn’t getting enough food and far too young to be around the fomites that are servers!
Deb then drops a bomb on Kayla and Mike: she wants Mike to start paying rent. No real reason! The kids are paying for formula and stuff with their own money, and Mike doesn’t even make enough a month to pay Mama Grizzly Deb 300 dollars a month, but as Deb wisely points out, “If everyone can chip in, it’s going to be less stressful for everyone.” Yes! With Mike working full-time, he can’t help care for Preston (and he’s admittedly doing a great job), and Kayla can never go back to high school because Mike won’t be there! Plus they will be completely destitute. Less stress for everyone that’s named Deb! Fantastic.
So Kayla and Mike soldier on, making do, even scraping together enough money to stay in a hotel one night because it’s November in Minnesota and the heat’s not working (and Deb is chasing her boyfriend around a graveyard somewhere).
One night, Deb actually shows up for dinner at her own home with a proposition for her daughter. She has the best idea ever! kid’s two months old, and Kayla’s getting a handle on the baby-rearing, whatever it’s name is, Deb thinks. So…Ol’ Deb’s gotten a little chunky. A little thick in the thighs. Heavy in the hammies. You know who could help with that? Anorexic daughter’s got all the good tips! So Deb asks Kayla if she’d like to go on a diet with her. Now, you may be thinking “WHAT I DON’T EVEN,” or maybe screaming it. But let’s let Deb explain it as she did to Kayla: “You may know better than me considering what you’ve gone through with your eating disorder.” Silently shake your head. You know you were already doing it.
A few weeks later, having neither embarked on Dieting With Deb or really even seen her around the house, Kayla meets her mom for a stern talk. She gets it all out: how sad and neglected she’s felt, how disappointed she is, how lonely she is and how incredibly fucked-up it is to ask your anorexic teen mom child to go on a diet with you and how much she needed her help. Deb is not having this bullshit, no siree. Deb was once voted “Most Likely to Be the Best Mom” ever in high school and dammit if she hasn’t lived up to that. Deb shakes her head at Kayla like we did at her in the last paragraph. “I tried,” Deb says. “I tried.”
One last time, guys: “What I Don’t Even.”
