Voice of Reason

Jayme Ritchie has a reputation for telling it like it is.

She’ll face down a gymnasium filled with high school kids and tell them how she started having sex at age 13, how she got pregnant at 17 and how, at age 19, she’s struggling to support herself and her baby without help from her family or the public dole.

It’s a tale she repeats as often as she can as a volunteer panelist with the Teen Voices, Teen Choices program offered by the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center. The program’s aim: to discourage teens from becoming pregnant by having a panel of their peers explain what it’s like to give birth and raise a child.

Ritchie is one of 10 young mothers and fathers who visit junior and senior high schools, boys and girls clubs and youth groups around Orange County to tell teens how parenthood changed their lives. All panelists are in their late teens or early 20s--that narrow window when they’re still young enough not to come off as preachy or as adults delivering lectures.

By sharing their stories, they hope to keep others from making the same mistakes they did, irrevocable choices that took away their freedom and their dreams.

“If I could just change one girl’s life,” Ritchie said. “I don’t want someone else to go through what I’m going through.”

On a recent morning, she and two other panelists took turns speaking before a group of 160 summer school students seated on bleachers in the Bolsa Grande High School gym in Garden Grove. Tall and slender, with dark hair flowing in waves down her back, Ritchie could have passed for one of the students--until she took her place on stage and began to speak into a microphone.

*

“Hi, my name is Jayme. I was 17 when I got pregnant. . . . When I was 13, I was staying out until 3. I was going to parties. I was having sex. I thought I couldn’t get pregnant.”

In a calm, matter-of-fact voice, she recited the details of her life. She started having sex at an early age because, she said, “I wasn’t getting any support at home.” She fell in love and thought that she would be with her boyfriend forever, but the relationship lasted just two months.

“On the same day he broke up with me, I found out I was pregnant,” she told the crowd. Her boyfriend wanted nothing to do with her or the baby.

Ritchie had a troubled pregnancy and was put on complete bed rest for five months. She had emergency surgery to save her infant’s life.

“My cervix couldn’t hold my baby. It wasn’t the kind of surgery you should have at 17,” she said. Both the surgery and the delivery were “very scary.”

“My labor lasted 11 1/2 hours and it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. It’s not something you should go through by yourself.”

But by herself she was. Her father was furious when he learned she was pregnant. She moved out of his house in Yorba Linda three months after the baby was born. She went on welfare, but the $450 a month she got wasn’t enough to get by on. For four months, she slept on a couch in a friend’s living room with her son in a nearby playpen.

Now, she shares a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate in Fullerton and works as a receptionist in a law office to support herself and Cameron, now 17 months old.

“My dad still doesn’t talk to me, and my mom has her own life,” Ritchie told the sophomores, who sat quietly. For them, she had no heartwarming tales of motherhood. Instead she described the sleepless nights after her baby was born, when she would wake up every four hours to feed and change a screaming infant. Life isn’t easier now that Cameron is a toddler.

“He’s all over the place and getting into everything,” Ritchie said. “I look forward sometimes to just putting my son to bed. I want to let you know that being a teen mom isn’t all cute. It’s not walking around the mall with a baby in a stroller.”

Ritchie would like to return to school to become a paralegal, but she can’t afford a nighttime baby-sitter, and she works during the day. The $200 she gets in monthly child support from her ex-boyfriend and the $1,000 a month she makes working full time barely cover the rent, baby clothes, diapers and food.

“My son is going without a lot of things he’d have if he had two parents. You need a family. You need to be stable,” she told the group. “I’m alone, except for my baby.”

The other panelists have their own stories of dreams deferred. Roge Idowu, a pretty 20-year-old Laguna Niguel resident, tells students how her plan to be a model was ruined the day she found out she was pregnant. She lost a modeling contract (“Who wants a model who weighs 210 pounds?”) and her boyfriend, who wanted nothing to do with her or the baby.

*

Dino Mayorga, a Fullerton resident who looks younger than his 23 years, explained how raising his 4-year-old daughter under a joint custody agreement with his ex-girlfriend put his dream of finishing college on hold.

“Everything’s much harder now,” he told them.

Both Mayorga and Idowu live at home with their parents, making it a little easier for them to work or attend school. So Ritchie is unique among the panelists.

“Jayme’s one of the rare ones who has less than zero support from her parents. She’s not getting any of the financial or emotional support that other panel members do, to varying degrees,” said Kathy McCarrell, executive director of the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center in Costa Mesa. “That sets her apart. Her struggle is harder.”

Ritchie’s candor and refusal to make excuses for her mistakes make her a strong panel member. When it comes to explaining how she got into her predicament, she candidly explains that she failed to use birth control.

“I thought I couldn’t get pregnant. I thought I could do whatever I want,” she said. “I’d run over my dad to go out at night, and when my mom asked if I was using protection, I lied.”

Her parents divorced when she was 7, and, Ritchie said, she became promiscuous because she was searching for affection. “I’ve been bounced around,” she said.

For the past year, Ritchie has participated in the panels about once a month, whenever she can take time off work. For this, she and other panelists received a stipend of $35 to $100 depending on the number of classes addressed.

*

“Her prognosis isn’t really as good as the other panelists’, but day in and day out, she’s doing her best,” McCarrell said of Ritchie.

The Teen Voices, Teen Choices program began two years ago, as a way to reduce teen pregnancies in Orange County. In 1996, more than 4,200 babies were born to county teenagers. In response, McCarrell led a committee that asked 150 teen mothers what might have prevented them from getting pregnant. Their answers surprised McCarrell: They said that nothing adults told them would have discouraged them from having unprotected sex, but if someone their age had told them how hard it is to be a teen parent, they would not have gotten pregnant.

Ten teen parents were then trained to be panelists and discuss their experiences. The panelists first talked to those at highest risk of becoming pregnant: residents of the Orangewood Children’s Home and group homes for abused and neglected children.

“The ones at highest risk of becoming pregnant are kids without families. They’re trying to make families,” McCarrell said.

Panelists now make about 100 presentations a year. One indication that the teens are listening to what they have to say: The center has conducted a before-and-after survey showing 85 percent of teens come away from the panel discussions with changed attitudes toward pregnancy. They no longer agree with statements such as “Having a baby with your partner will keep your relationship together,” and “Becoming a parent ends the loneliness and isolation so many teenagers feel.”

For her part, Ritchie doesn’t need any poll to tell her that her message is being heard. After her talk, the students raise their hands and ask her the kind of personal questions they might ask a friend. She has heard them all before.

“Did you think about getting an abortion?”

“I don’t believe in that,” Ritchie told them.

“Why didn’t you use birth control?”

“I did at first, but when you’re in the moment, it seems inconvenient,” she said. “I didn’t think about the consequences.”

“Why didn’t you give the baby up for adoption?”

“I think I was kind of selfish. I thought I could keep my boyfriend by having his baby. If I could go back, I would give up the baby for adoption. I don’t have all the resources he needs. I want him to have a home and a stable family. I can’t give him that.”

“What will you tell your son when he’s older?”

“I am going to tell my son about my life, and I’m not going to lie,” she answered.

Later, when the students had filed out of the gym and the bleachers are empty, a blond girl quietly approached Ritchie and said, “I’m worried about my friend.” She said her 13-year-old girlfriend has been picking up boys at a local amusement park.

“I was doing that,” Ritchie told her. “Just tell her that you heard this girl talk today, that she has a baby now, and it’s so hard.”

Ritchie knows when a girl is headed for big trouble, and if given the chance, she’ll tell her all about it.

For more information, contact Teen Voices at (949) 722-1107.