Half of all teenagers fail to use contraception the first time they have sex and there are 240 young mothers under the age of 19 in Brighton and Hove - most of whom have to deal with the stigma of being a teenage mum.

Ruth Addicott went along to a mother-and-baby group to meet some of them and hear first-hand what it's really like to cope with having a baby so young

On my way to the mother-and- baby group, the bus is packed with the usual faces: two students talking about the prospect of spending a year in LA, pensioners clutching their sticks and bags of shopping and a glamorous woman with a blonde bob talking loudly into her mobile phone.

As the bus comes to a halt, a young girl gets on, barely 16, hair scraped back, knackered and flustered as she struggles to hoist a pram up the step.

Everyone stares, but no one helps.

Welcome to the world of teenage mums.

There are few sections of society which have taken quite as big a battering as young mums. The shocking rate of teenage pregnancies is forever in the news but while we hear from politicians, social workers and teenage liaison officers we seldom hear from the mothers themselves.

Choices, a post-natal group held at the Tarner Children's Centre in Brighton, supports about half the teenage mothers in the city every year.

Most are aged between 14 and 21, although some are as young as 13. Apart from food, a free bus pass and tips on tantrums, it's an opportunity for them to make new friends, improve their self esteem and rebuild identity.

As soon as the doors open at 12.30pm on a Friday, the mothers flock in and, within five minutes of arriving, I find myself clutching my notebook in one hand and holding a baby with the other. It's a struggle to make myself heard above the din.

Laura Young was 16 when she fell pregnant with Keisha, now three. She had only known Keisha's dad for two months and they split up shortly afterwards..

"I thought he loved me. He promised me the world and I was naive," she says..

Although she had support from her own mother, Laura was soon struggling to cope. After weeks of sleepless nights and her ex branding her "fat", "lazy" and "useless", she found herself on the edge and went to the Women's Refuge.

"I'd cry for hours," she says. "Even when I was giving Keisha breakfast or putting her in the bath, I'd be crying." Things got worse until one day she thought about ending it altogether. "I got the duvet and seriously thought about putting it over her head," she says. "That's when I knew there was something wrong and I took myself straight off to social services. Looking back now, it was a cry for help.

Keisha wanted more and more attention and I was worried about bills." In the end, Laura was so scared of being on her own, she moved in with her mum. The sad thing was, while she had managed to get her own life back on track, she still had to deal with comments from strangers remarking on the fact Keisha was a mixed race child.

"Keisha is the only thing that keeps me going," she says, affectionately.

"Like today, when my sink started leaking, I looked at her and thought if I wasn't here, she'd have no one. I love her. I wouldn't change her for the world."

Furthermore, she says it is Keisha who has inspired her to go back to college and train to be a midwife. "If I'm doing something responsible, she will hopefully grow up thinking she should do something responsible too," she says.

Gemma Minter, 18, is also adjusting to life as a single mum, after giving birth to Lilly Ann just three weeks ago.

She was 17 when she became pregnant. "I was shell-shocked," she says. "I thought, What the hell have I done?' I'm the most unmaternal person you could ever meet. The scariest part was telling my mum. She said, You little cow! I'm going to be a grandmother before I'm 40'. But she was absolutely brilliant." Gemma had to drop out of college and scrap plans to study chemistry at university, but now intends to do a nursing diploma in September instead.

Asked how she feels about being a teenage mum, she says: "I have three hours sleep a night but I feel fantastic. I feel like I could run up a mountain.

I'm doing more now than I ever thought possible. Just look at her," she says, cuddling Lilly Ann in her arms. "Just one smile makes your day." Kelly Rudwick, 20, is equally as proud of her little boy Ryan, now six-and-a-half months. He has a determined look on his face and an equally determined grip on my pen.

Kelly was 19 and working as a chef at upmarket restaurant Terre A Terre when she got pregnant. Living with a group of friends who used to have parties every night, she quickly moved out and says the friends she had before are "non-existent" now.

The reality of teenage pregnancy really hit home as soon as she moved into sheltered accommodation. She describes some horrifying experiences, including one place which left her "riddled with bed bugs".

"Some of the places for single mothers are terrible," she says. "We'd be woken up at 4am every morning by the fire alarm. There was one time when someone tried to cook a tin of baked beans on the stove without a saucepan. It's difficult enough for any woman to cope with a baby, without being on your own in a horrible place." Kelly has now gone back to work at the restaurant and lives with Ryan's dad, her partner Jordan, in a one-bed flat in Hollingdean. She says she wouldn't be able to manage without him.

One of the hardest times for her was going back and forth to hospital shortly after Ryan was born. He went in first with an eye infection, then doctors discovered a lump in his stomach, which he had to have removed. To make matters worse, Kelly was admitted to hospital herself the same day and had to have her gall bladder removed.

Asked how she has changed since becoming a mum, she replies: "I feel a lot more mature and a lot older.

I don't call it an accident because I love him to bits. Just seeing him smile and laugh makes life worth living." As the conversation turns briefly to a toddler doing his first poo in his potty, it soon reverts back to the taunts and patronising looks they get from strangers in the street. The one thing all these mothers have in common is the inability to shake off the stigma attached to being a teenage mum.

"I burst into tears once, when a woman had a go at me," confesses Kelly.

Joanne Steadman, who was 19 when she had her son Archie, agrees. "Students are the worst because they don't understand," she says. "You get on the bus with your buggy and they just stare. You have to actually shout at them before they move sometimes. Even then, they just look at each other.

"A lot of people think we're stupid and sit there muttering about us. I got on the bus once when I was heavily pregnant and asked this woman if I could sit down and she said, We've all had babies. Get over it'." Worried about the reaction from the start, Joanne says she felt really embarrassed getting on the bus when she first had Archie. "I felt everyone was looking at me, I was convinced I was doing everything wrong the whole time," she says.

Gemma agrees: "You do feel judged, really badly judged. The baby blues alone are bad enough but when you've got a complete stranger having a go, it's horrible." Agnes Munday, a qualified ante-natal teacher, has seen hundreds of teenagers since she set up the group four years ago.

As well as offering advice on sexual health and contraception to try and reduce the risk of a second pregnancy (50 per cent of teenagers in Brighton do not use contraception the first time they have sex), Choices also provides help with relationships - domestic violence being another huge issue for teenage parents.

In addition to the post-natal group, Agnes also runs an ante-natal group for young people. Funded by Children In Need, the nine-week programme covers everything from labour to child care and relationships.

Claire, 14, from Brighton is among the teenagers present today. She is intelligent, articulate and expecting her first child in July. "I was really shocked when I found out," she says.

"I thought I'd have kids in my 20s, not now."

Asked how her boyfriend reacted when she broke the news to him, she says, simply: "He fainted."

The announcement also came as a shock to Claire's mum, who couldn't even face her for two weeks. Although some friends and family tried to persuade her to have an abortion, Claire has decided to keep the baby and got engaged to her boyfriend last month.

She has her hospital check-ups before school and is already learning to deal with comments from her classmates.

"People say, You won't cope' - but they're just being spiteful," she says.

"A lot of people think teen mums are stupid but why can't you be a mum when you're young?" That said, Claire is still trying to come to terms with it herself. Just looking into her eyes, it is obvious she is terrified. "I wouldn't recommend any young girl to have a baby unless they are with someone they really care about and trust," she says.

Having worked with many vulnerable girls over the years, however, Agnes believes there are many positives, despite their age. She claims some girls believe falling pregnant was the best thing that could have happened to them as it was an incentive to change their lifestyle, which in some cases may have been dominated by drink and drugs.

One of the key things needed now, she says, is more funding for creches and flexibility in returning to learning.

"Once their baby is a few months old a lot of mums are keen to go back to studying," she explains. "I've seen some fantastic examples where women have gone on to university a few years down the line so having a baby was a real turning point for them." Unfortunately, funding for the post-natal group still hangs in the balance.

It is due to expire at the end of March and having applied for a grant, they are still awaiting the outcome.

"Young parents tell us again and again what they really want is a group with other young people of the same age," Agnes says.

As the session comes to an end and the mums try and steer their toddlers away from the toys to put their coats on and catch the bus, there are a few more tantrums. Helping her friend reason with her child as well as her own, Gemma smiles and says: "We didn't follow the normal route but so what?"

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