I was at family planning in Henderson. I gave the nurse the test back and she waited and then I walked back into the consultant room and sat down and she just looked at me with this really serious look on her face and said, ‘It’s positive’. And I just remember looking at her and looking at my best friend and bursting into tears because, like, I so wasn’t prepared to hear those words. I didn’t think I’d ever hear those words, so it was a really big shock. It was really hard to handle. It was a week before my 16th birthday.

I was involved with a really bad crowd. I let my older brother lead me astray. I dropped out of school. Ran away. And then found out I was pregnant. We were struggling a lot, me and my brother and the people we were living with. We never had any money. We were sharing rooms. There was never any food in the house. It was a really horrible situation and it scared me a lot because I couldn’t see myself getting out of it any time soon.

It was quite confronting finding out I was pregnant. It made me think twice about the people I hang out with and who I’d want around my baby. Because the people I had around myself weren’t nice at all. That was definitely not the right environment to bring a baby into.

My brother and my ex would put on their big jackets and go steal meat from the supermarket to feed me until my mum and her partner found a house and I decided it was time to get out and move back in with her to get through this pregnancy.

When I was growing up my mum wasn’t around. Like, she couldn’t support us as kids. She had my brother when she was 16 and she was 20 when she had me. So she was a young parent herself and she didn’t have much help from my grandparents. She knows what it's like to be a single mum and struggle and she didn’t want to see me go through that. My mum stripped it back and told me the harsh reality. I was worried about how I was going to get money. It freaked me out a lot because I had no idea how I was going to support my baby, even myself. And I was so worried I would resent her or I would be a bad mum because I didn’t like kids. But once she got here it was just love at first sight. It really was.

I thought it was a dream. I didn't know whether she was real or not. They put her on my chest, and I remember putting my hand on her head and she was all covered in goo and I sort of looked at my mum and looked at her and I had to ask if she was real cause she was just so perfect to me. It was like, this was only thing that was mine and no one can take her away from me. It was such an awesome feeling, just knowing that's something that I've got for the rest of my life. I just love her.