Micah-Laine Eleneki from Baldwin High School holds up pictures of her son.
’Obviously I’m too young’
By CLAUDINE SAN NICOLAS, Staff Writer
Every time Jessica Wongsam’s friends coo over her baby boy and mention how they’d like to have one too, she stops them.
“I tell them, ’No! No, seriously, you don’t want to have a baby,’” Wongsam said.
At age 17, Wongsam lives with the responsibilities of being a teenage mom, which means giving up being a teenager.
“They think it’s all cute and fun but not all of it,” she said.
She loves her baby but says she wishes she had used birth control measures to wait for the right time.
“Obviously I’m too young,” she said. “I’m happy now that I have him, but I wish I would have waited.”
Wongsam’s classmate, 17-year-old Micah-Laine Eleneki, also knows how difficult it is to be a teenage mother.
“Everything is about the baby, and nothing’s about you,” said Eleneki, describing her life after giving birth to 13-month-old Loea.
Both Eleneki and Wongsam said they’ve maintained relationships with the fathers of their children, who are helping to support the babies in all aspects including finances and overall child rearing. But the primary responsibility rests on them as moms.
May has been designated as Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month in Hawaii, and the teenage moms at Baldwin High School agree parenting is especially difficult at their age. They would urge their peers to be better informed about preventing pregnancies.
“I think you can inform them and all that, but it’s still their choice,” Wongsam said.
Eleneki said she believes it would also be helpful to have contraceptives and birth control information more readily available to teens. For example, she said she did not know about the existence of Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides confidential counseling and contraceptives, until after she had her baby.
She said becoming a parent has changed her life.
“You miss buying things for yourself and doing things for yourself,” Eleneki said.
Wongsam said she recently used the cash she received for her birthday to purchase food and clothes for her 7-month-old son, Jerrell Rey.
“I don’t mind spending it on him,” she said.
Senior Kristine Silva said she misses having the freedom to go out at night and spending time with friends at the beach or perhaps at a movie.
“The point is you can’t go out when you want to,” Wongsam said.
For this year’s Mother’s Day, Wongsam and Eleneki said they were treated to some free time on the beach and a night out for dinner while their children were cared for by relatives.
Both said they plan to finish high school and from there, attend college or get a job.
They were willing to tell their stories as examples for other teenagers during Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. Teenagers across Hawaii are urged to go online to participate in a local campaign designed to help prevent teen pregnancy.
Teens can take an online quiz in the privacy of their home or at school by going to www.TeenLineHawaii.org. The quiz, available through Tuesday, is designed to encourage teens to think carefully before having sex.
Last year’s online quiz attracted more than 2,400 teens across the state during the monthlong campaign. The campaign, first initiated in 2004, was established by the Teen Intervention Program, which is offered through Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children. The Teen Intervention Program modeled its quiz and other campaign materials after a national program developed by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
AlohaCare has again provided the Teen Intervention Program with a $20,000 grant to update its local online version of the national teen pregnancy prevention quiz.
“The quiz is designed to test young people on how much they really know about the consequences of having sex at an early age, and allows them to reflect on the decisions they would make in certain situations,” Teen Intervention Program Director Donna Tsutsumi-Ota said.
To increase participation, Teen Intervention Program is offering prizes to teens who take the online quiz during this month.
“Statistics show that more than 75 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds use the Internet,” said Tsutsumi-Ota. “Of those going online, two out of three have used the Internet to search for health information and four out of 10 have actually changed their behavior because of information found on the Web.
“Using the Internet to send out a clear message to teens regarding the consequences of teen pregnancy is a proven method that works.”
“Although teenage pregnancy, abortion and birth rates have declined in the United States, the U.S. continues to have the highest rates in teen pregnancy and births in the Western industrialized world,” said Dr. Rio Banner, medical director for AlohaCare. “In Hawaii, the figures are alarming.”
In 2003, the year the latest statistics are available from the state Department of Health, there were 2,372 Hawaii youths under the age of 19 who became pregnant, averaging six babies per day. (There is no breakdown of numbers for Maui County.)
The latest statistics also show that 34 percent of Hawaii’s high school students and 12 percent of the state’s middle school students have had sex.
In addition to funding the online quiz, AlohaCare’s grant was used to send 21,000 postcards and fliers encouraging teens to take the quiz.
As part of Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, the Teen Intervention Program also sponsored a play, “It Can Happen to You,” which was performed at Baldwin and Maui high schools.
Baldwin teen parenting teacher Jackie Hashimoto has been teaching both pregnant teens and those with babies for about five years. She suggests getting peers to talk to each other may be one of the most effective methods of discouraging teen pregnancies.
She also said more parent education is needed. Her students have told her their parents remained unwilling to allow their teenagers to be on birth control even after their child tells them they are sexually active.
According to a 2004 survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a sexually active teen girl who does not use contraception has a 90 percent chance of pregnancy within one year. In addition, the campaign states that only a third of teen moms are likely to complete high school.
“Sometimes Hawaii’s culture makes it difficult for parents to discuss delicate issues such as sex with their children,” said Tsutsumi-Ota. (Nicolas,2007)
