16 & Preggers: Izabella

Wow. This is exactly what I needed. I watched Love Actually last night and squeed about love for like 3 hours (god that movie is long) then spend today on the school playground with second grade girls braiding my hair. So basically, I was ready to breed, until 16 & Pregnant came along to show me what it’s really like to live the babymaking dream.

You know that facebook feature that makes you do complicated math before you can login so you can’t drunk facebook people? (Or maybe its iphone or gmail or something. Correct me.) They should have that on vaginas. or at least drunk vaginas. At least mine anyway. Actually penises would be better. Or like an awesome consent-o-meter. Or an auto-condom that straps itself on when you get a boner. I don’t know. Science, work on it.

Anyway, this week our mom is Izabella, a Catholic from Utah, and her baby papa is named Jairo. Within the first five minutes of the episode, his crimes are a. making me hungry for a gyro because of the damn rhyme and b. being really douchey about his hair, which he gets cut every five days.

git it boiii

Other than that, he seems to be doing okay as a papa. Izabella is gorgeous, despite her parent’s butchering of one of my favorite names. She has a beautiful Megan Fox (dark hair, blue eyes) thing going on, excepts with braces, and she seems to be half Hispanic (my regular readers know how fond of hybrids I am). Izabella’s going in to her sophomore year of high school, so she’s actually one of our younger moms.

The big drama with Izabella’s episode is that she waited until her 8th month of pregnancy to tell her friends and non-immediate family. She lies to and avoids even her best friends; there’s a nice little montage of her making up various excuses while on the phone with friends. She got pregnant in January, hid it all through the school year, and decided to start telling people in August. She didn’t tell anybody for so long because she didn’t want to be judged and lose friends – but I think going from your friends thinking you’re blowing them off for 6 months to realizing that you’ve been keeping a huge secret for eight months might have been the worse option.

Following a grand tradition, the first scene is between Izabella and her mom. Breaking the pattern, though, her mom is very supportive, neither suggesting abortions nor calling her daughter an idiot. Her mom is REALLY youthful, maybe even childlike.

like a young, friendly, crooked eyed blonde whale

While mom and daughter talk, a dishtowel gets burned black on the stove. I believe this is a metaphor for how mom wasn’t paying attention to Izabella and now she’s ruined! Mom comforts Izabella for the shit that’s about to go down – aka, she’s about to reveal her pregnancy to a shccked world.

Or, not so shocked. When Izabella heads to her best friend Cassidy’s house, she finds out Cassidy has already heard the rumors and is not too happy Izabella decided not to share the news herself. The two hug it out, but I sense conflict. Even though Cassidy already knew through the grapevine, I feel like a surprise pregnant belly is just not the way to go. I can totally understand why friends and family would be wounded by this.

Next on the confession train are Izabella’s aunt and uncle. The uncle’s name is Luigi, which explains why she didn’t want to tell him before. He is really, really unhappy, and also an asshole. He lets loose this gem:

‘It just shows it doesn’t matter how close you are with your daughter, you guys are close and look what happened.”

It’s a little late for the slut-shaming at this point, although I guess they could have gotten that out of the way earlier had they decided to share, oh, maybe seven months earlier. Luigi is disappointed.

Now that the people closest to her know, Izabella is ready to enter the wide world of church. Jesus Christ! will not be happy with you, sinner girl. Surprisingly, there is no ‘Saved’ situation and she doesn’t get stoned (the torturey way, not the drug way)or claim a virgin birth or anything.

Since Izabella’s less close friends from school still don’t know, or haven’t heard it from her, the family decides the best way to share the news is to throw a last minute baby shower. Dude, if I was seeing my close friend’s baby belly for the first time at her shower, I would not be buying that bitch a present. Apparently Cassidy feels similarly, since she skips out on the baby shower and from that point semi-disappears from Izabella’s life. This is so sad! They’re been friends forever! See adorbz:

rawr

Izabella and her mom claim that it’s “kind of rude” of Cassidy not to come to her very best friend’s baby shower. I would counter that it’s “definitely rude” to hide your pregnancy from your best friend for eight months, but ok.

Alright, here’s my beef with this.. Izabella was SO ASHAMED of being pregnant that she didn’t tell ANYONE except her family and the dad… meanwhile, she was applying to be on a reality show to expose her condition to millions of people she will never meet. Contradiction?

At the baby shower, I have another “come ON mtv moment when a friend asks “do you think people are going to mean when you come back to school?” What kind of awful friend asks that? Do people ask that shit in real life, or does mtv make them?If Izabella were my friend id be like “bitch if they talk shit I’ll KILL them HOES@” I got your back!” I would not be like,  ‘ ohh I bet this is gonna suck for you.’ hmph.

We learn a bit more about Izabella’s family situation as we get closer to the birth and her stretch marks expand.

MY GOD

Izabella’s dad blames her mom for the pregnancy, and for being a buddy buddy instead of strict mom. Ive had this conversation with my mom a MILLION times. I have the most permissive parents, and I turned out to be a giant slut. I might have been a giant slut with strict parents, too. It just would have been more of a challenge! My mom talks about her freakin crazy Christian scientist mom and her 10 pm curfew through high school,a nd I get it. I get it, Izabella’s mom. What I don’t get is why these parents are having this conversation in front of their pregnant teenage daughter and making her feel guilty for messing up their relationship in addition to, you know, the horribly shameful premarital sex.

Izabella stands up for her mom: “I like the way you are. Look at all the other moms, their daughters hate them.”

Her mom shoots back: “Yea but their daughters aren’t pregnant.”

Ouch.

Really, I think the moral of teen pregnancy is that it can happen to anyone. We’ve had smart girls from great families and dumb bitches from broken homes and everything inbetween, and though the scale tends to fall more frequently on the latter side, it can still happen to ANY SEXUALLY ACTIVE TEENAGER. It only takes one mistake, or broken condom, or whatever. Not all teens who get pregnant were even having unprotected sex. This always pisses me off. Although, I would like to see some slutty girls on this show who got knocked up by some rando. I guess they might be getting abortions though, dunno.

Izabella goes to the baby doctor thinking she still has two weeks to go – but because her blood pressure is high, they’re going to induce labor on Friday, September 17! Which is right near my birthday, yyaaay!

The baby plan is as follows: Mom runs her own daycare, so she’ll take the baby during the day. Daddy Jairo is moving into the house on two conditions: he must enroll in college, and can’t share a bed with Izabella. He shares the comforting news that he’s planning to “get a career” in something unspecified at some time in the unspecified future.

Izabella wakes up on September 17, helps Jairo blowdry his hair (yes, really, and yes it’s like one centimeter long) and then heads to the hospital to give birth! Jairo reveals his pansiness -he doesn’t want to look when the baby comes. Izabella comes to the hospital at 7 am and gets her labor inducing drugs and some oxygen. 8 hours in, and she’s still not dilated enough to push – but she gets an epidural for the pain. She also gets to look at her doctor’s terrifying face right near her vag.

Michael Kors’ jolly cousin?

14 hours in, and she can finally push!

It’s actually really kind of a quiet, calm birth, until the baby comes out and I’m like AHHH FUCK HOLY SHIT NASTY. I will spare you the slimy alien shot. The baby boy is named Enrique Jairo

patoot!

After Enrique is born, family starts flooding in to visit, including Jairo’s super ambitious cousin. He’s all ‘yea so I’m heading to college then law school cuz I’m a baller. Howboutchoo, you gonna finish high school ever?’ Jairo kind of looks away and says he did finish high school, and doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. Izabella should have banged this lawyer cousin instead.

Back at home, Izabella practices breastfeeding, deals with middle of the night baby shenanigans, and tries to stay on top of her school work – with no support from Cassidy, who promised to help and is still ignoring calls and texts.

She also gets another wonderful visit from Uncle Luigi, who makes everybody feel horrible! He basically calls the kids lazy (for Jairo this could be true, but I like Izabella!) and says the grandparents are making it too easy for them. Jerk. He guilts Izabella’s family for helping too much. They retort that they want her to finish high school and college so she can make a good life for her baby, instead of forcing her to grow up instantly and dooming her whole freaking life. That’s right. Shut up luigi. Jersey shore butthead. This section ends with Izabella saying “I just hope Jairo and I don’t let them down,” which means they’re about to let them down.

After a few weeks, Izabella is heading back to school and Jairo is enrolling in community college. Izabella and Cassidy have a boring reconciliation at school, where Izabella is hurt that Cassidy wasn’t there for her the last month and Cassidy is hurt that Izabella didn’t let her be there for her for the first eight months. I don’t know and don’t care who wins that one.

(Also, I think Izabella’s lips shrank since the beginning of the episode. Anyone else notice this? She had those guppy lips at the beginning.)

Izabella is jazzed about getting back to school and then getting back to baby Enrique at night, but Jairo is super grumpy uncommunicative at the end of the day. He looks like he might cry. When Izabella questions him and accuses him of acting “rude” (is this some sort of really hurtful code word in Utah?) he storms off.

When he gets back, we find out why: he completely lied about graduating from high school. He has no diploma. Oh god. That means he can’t even go on to community college.

Izabella and her papa have a nice conversation about the Jairo sitch. She shows some shocking maturity by saying shes given him enough chances and if he doesn’t get shit together hes out. Her dad looks super proud in that moment, as he should.

The new deal is that Jairo has until May to graduate, which is pretty generous… but Jairo responds, “I’m sorry if I don’t do what you guys are expecting me to do. Do you think you can handle Enrique on your own?” Izabella basically says, eff you, I don’t care if you live here, you’re still helping me with the damn baby.

At the end of the show, we see the cute/scary baptism and learn nothing new about how up in the air things are. Izabella’s super grateful for her family, hopes Jairo gets it together, etc. She doesn’t seem too despondent. Yay family!

And this is where the aftershow comes in, even though I HATE THAT HOST. She makes everything even more awkward than it needs to be, but I always watch because I want to know if the couples are still together. (She asks insightful questions like these: “What is it that you thought your friends and family would judge you so harshly on?” Being a pregnant teen, dumbass.)

In this case, yes, they are and Jairo has apparently made a big turnaround. He has stepped it up in school, has a job, and has changed a lot – more than Izabella expected him to, actually. They’re still together. Yay? There wasn’t a lot to like about him, but compared to past dads not that much to hate.

Izabella shows a lot of insight in her interview – for instance, she says she thinks her dad blamed her mom for the pregnancy because he felt guilty for it himself. She’s also a few credits ahead in her class and trying to graduate from high school early. Go Izabella! Let me say I really hope you DON’T make it on to Teen Mom 3, because your life seems to be going well and they’ll only put you on there if it a. sucks and b. they can make it worse through fame.

By the way, if you ever watch the aftershow there is a ridiculous/sad chatroom to the side of many (possibly fake) teen mothers misspelling about their pregnancies and kids.

So that’s all folks, sorry it’s a quick one but I’m EXHAUSTEDDDD. But another week and another episode have convinced me to put off pregnancy! Hooray!

the pushing face gets me every time.