My Story: Childbirth, Burden, and Navigating Teenage Motherhood

My name is Christella Uwamwezi, I am a teenage girl who was thrown into adulthood by unexpected motherhood when I was still a child myself. Nothing could have prepared me for the physical and emotional pain, stigma, and shame I was forced to endure. This is my story.

I was born and raised in Ngoma district, in the Eastern part of Rwanda. I had a normal childhood and faced common challenges like any other village girl. My ordeal did not begin until I was in high school when I was seventeen. My boyfriend, twenty-one and full of promises, became my secret muse. Three months of stolen glances, confessions, and clandestine meetings led to a memorable night that became my fate.

As you have already figured, the boyfriend was not going to be of much use. As time passed, I knew I had to come up with a plan, a desperate escape from my family’s watchful eyes. I concocted a web of lies, convincing my parents that a boarding school in Kayonza awaited me. My belly, four months pregnant, was getting visible, I could feel the weight of my unborn child but it felt like the weight of my choices.

I left home, with my family believing I was going to school. I rented a modest house, diverting school fees and pocket money to pay bills. I took a hairdressing course at a nearby TVET school —a skill to sustain my independence. I was living alone. As my belly swelled, so did my fear. At seven months, I could no longer bear the isolation. The walls of the tiny one-room house closed in, I thought of calling my boyfriend but I was not ready to hear it if he was not ready to help.

News travels faster, somehow my family had found out. Phone conversations with my family were exclusively arguments, tears, insults, and curses. My mother was disappointed in me, my father no longer wanted to see my siblings judge every word I said.

Fast forward two years, my daughter has become my pride and almost exclusively thinks about. She was my fragile hope—a testament to defiance. At times I felt she could hear and feel my resentment and the pain I went through. I would whisper to her: “We are warriors, my love. Let’s write our own story of hope and resilience.”

I went back to school, and finished secondary school. I am now doing my undergraduate degree. I am a survivor of the immense pain that comes with premature motherhood, but I am also a proud mother.