Kailey and Nathan are now the parents of a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, Avery, and although they didn’t plan to start a family so early, they don’t regret how their lives turned out and now live together as a happy family.
Kaily was 16 when she got pregnant. Nathan was 18 at the time, and although they had known each other for a few years at the time, they had only been together for a few months, and Kailey thought Nathan would definitely leave if she told him the news, so she waited almost two months before telling him she was pregnant. But the boy was surprisingly excited and happy about his paternity.
The young parents were living in the state of Alabama at the time, a small town where young girls disappeared from public view when they accidentally got pregnant because they had to face incredibly strong prejudice. Kailey had previously been told by a doctor that she was ɪɴꜰᴇʀᴛɪʟᴇ, so she had no idea she could get pregnant. Kailey took a pregnancy test as a joke with one of her friends and found out she was expecting a baby. She was sʜᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ and immediately took two more tests to be sure of the result.
She was most afraid to tell her father the news, as she hadn’t even told him about dating anyone before, and his father hadn’t received the news well at first, but he’s now a proud grandfather who adores his grandson.
Although Kailey dreaded the ordeal that awaited her throughout her pregnancy, she was sure from the first minute that she wouldn’t want to ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴ the baby. She went to school until the sixth month of her pregnancy, after which she continued to study online. Avery was born in March 2020, just as the world was going into lockdown because of the ᴘᴀɴᴅᴇᴍɪᴄ. That meant that not only did Kailey and Nathan have to deal with being parents at a very young age, but they also didn’t get the usual support groups or family visits that would have happened outside of lockdown. It was 3 or 4 months before Kailey’s father, Scott, could meet his grandson at all.
Kailey and Nathan were engaged in November 2020, when Kailey was just 17 and Nathan was 19. They are now married and live in Omaha, Nebraska for Nathan’s job, while Kailey continues her studies and looks after Avery.
“We don’t usually get those very negative reactions. People often think we’re babysitters or something. Sometimes they stare, but I feel like I get the worst reactions when I’m alone with the baby,” says Kailey, who admits that she used to condemn teenage moms, but now her opinion has completely changed.
The young mom also shares her experiences on Instagram and YouTube to help other teenage moms because she was helped by similar videos when she got pregnant. “I wanted to not condone it, not encourage teen pregnancy, but show the real side,” she says.
Most of her ᴄʀɪᴛɪᴄs have argued that having a child ruins her life because she can’t finish her studies that way, but Kailey has thoroughly refuted opinions like this.
“I think the biggest thing I’ve refuted is that as a teenage mother, you can’t graduate, you can’t go to college, and you can’t have any future. This is not true at all, as I graduated at the age of 16, started university at the age of 17, and got my university degree at the age of 20,” says the young girl.