As Destyney Postel sat in her living room, reading to her son, it was the quintesential picture of motherhood...except one thing. Postel is 15.
The Torch first interviewed Postel, so., last year for the story Premature parents: teen pregnancy changes the lives of everyone involved⎯when she was 15 and pregnant. It has been ten months since that initial interview, and a lot has changed.
“When I told my mom, she said that I was going to have an abortion…[then] we [my boyfriend and I] were going to give it up for adoption…I didn’t know what to do,” Postel recalled in her last Torch interview. But Postel is almost 16 now, and no longer pregnant; she has a son, Kyle, who is almost nine months old.
“In the first few months I seriously considered [giving the baby up for adoption],” Postel confessed, “but then I got closer to him and I couldn’t do it.”
So life changed, drastically.
“Life’s different because I gotta think of someone else before me now,” Postel said. It’s a new concept, she admits, one that she will have to continually work at.
But not everything is different. Postel is still with the baby’s father, Derrick Meyer, so. He takes care of Kyle every other day, with the help of his parents. “[Kyle] has kinda made us closer, but pushed us apart at the same time,” Postel said. “…It’s made us closer because we have to do something as a team now, but it’s pushed us apart because we fight a lot, because of our different living styles.”
And it’s been like this since Kyle was born last May. In fact, Postel and Meyer have been together for nearly three years.
When he was interviewed last April, Meyer’s outlook was good. “I think it [the pregnancy] has brought us closer,” Meyer said. “We’ve been together for almost two years. After she has the baby, we’re probably going to move in with each other during the summer and we’ve even talked about marriage.”
Things didn’t move that fast for the couple; they still live at their respective parents’ houses, and they are both still unmarried. But the couple is doing well, considering the circumstances.
Unlike the majority of teen couples⎯let alone those with infants⎯ Postel and Meyer have been together through the pregnancy and the birth of their son. By doing this, they have beaten the statistics showing that a majority of teenage fathers bolt from the relationship, soon after hearing the news of the baby’s appearance.
But this is not the only area in which the couple has challenged the odds.
Statistics show that one-third of all American girls will get pregnant in their teenage years⎯that’s a sobering 750,000 annually. Of these, more than two-thirds of all teenagers who have a baby will not graduate from high school. However, Postel seems certain of her academic future.
“[Both my boyfriend and I] are still in school,” Postel said. “I don’t know what he [Meyer] wants to be, but I’m trying to become a doctor. I’m not letting my dream go down because I had a baby.”
Though her expected 2012 graduation date is still quite far away, Postel already has eventual plans of attending Kirkwood Community College, to become a doctor. This is how she hopes to one day care for her son.
But for now, she has to settle for a part-time job, to provide for Kyle. “This year I’m going to be 16, and so I’m gonna get a job at my mom’s work. And so, that’s how I’m gonna support him [Kyle],” Postel said.
Today, watching Postel help her son crawl, or cuddle Winnie the Pooh, it’s hard to tell what’s running through her mind. She could be contemplating her undoubtedly difficult future, thinking of times before his birth, or simply remembering his birth⎯a possible blessing in disguise.
“Maybe Kyle being born is kind of a blessing, you know?” she told the Torch. “I mean, you have to grow up and think about someone else before yourself when you have a baby, and not be immature. And if I didn’t have a baby right now, I’d probably be failing school and doing other stuff, and my boyfriend, probably, would try drugs and all that. We could be normal teenagers, and we can’t do that now because we have a baby.”
There’s not doubting that Postel’s past, and future, have been, and will be, hard. But as she gazes into Kyle’s eyes⎯a motherly look towards her son⎯there is the faintest glimmer that, as she said, “Maybe, I don’t know⎯maybe it’ll all be alright.”
EMMA LEHMANN
