A Third Option
A journey through a young woman’s unplanned pregnancy.
Written by Justin Hecht
She checked the result of her pregnancy test: Positive.
“Nah, that’s wrong,” she assured herself, so she took another test to confirm her disbelief: Negative. She decided to take another to be certain. And then another. And another. After eight tests, the results were an even split.
Part of her wanted to confirm if she was pregnant, part of her wanted to deny any possibility, and part of her doubted if peeing on a stick was an accurate way to be informed that her whole world might suddenly flip upside down.
Kayla, a 20-year-old student at Whatcom Community College at the time, sought a definitive answer. Her friend accompanied her to Planned Parenthood, and she took one more test. A nurse told her she was pregnant and four to six weeks along.
“I completely froze,” Kayla said, her eyes wider than her glasses. “I couldn’t really process what was happening.”
Kayla’s friend helped her sort through her thoughts and feelings, and then Kayla immediately went to tell the biological father who she had been casually seeing for about a month. He asked her what she wanted to do.
“Well, I guess we’re going to get an abortion, ’cause I can’t raise a baby,” she said.
After her upcoming graduation from Whatcom Community College, Kayla planned to transfer to Western Washington University and hoped to enter the medical field. She was interested in potentially becoming a surgical technologist or a massage therapist. She wanted to have a successful career.
“The plan that I had for my life completely stopped,” Kayla said. “Having a child totally throws the wrench into all that.”
Seeing no other option, Kayla scheduled an early morning appointment to get a medical abortion from Planned Parenthood approximately one week out. On the day of the appointment, Kayla’s alarm blared. She woke up, silenced it and went right back to sleep, she said.
“I was like, ‘I’m not going. I’m tired. It’s too early,’” Kayla said.
So, she scheduled another appointment for a few days later to get the abortion pill.
The day of the rescheduled appointment, Kayla walked towards her car after getting out of a class, and her phone vibrated to remind her of it. She stopped to look at the notification and was hit by “the pit in your stomach feeling,” she said. “You know, when you feel like your heart just sinks.”
She got in her car and didn’t go to the appointment or reschedule. Kayla chose to keep and raise her child.
The biological father and Kayla had not been communicating much, but they had somewhat of an unspoken plan that she was going to raise their child herself, she said. But she became determined and wanted to live into the responsibility.
“I was gonna fight tooth and nail to make it happen,” Kayla affirmed.
Kayla told her dad, and he brought up Whatcom County Pregnancy Clinic in downtown Bellingham as a good place to potentially receive more help.
“People want to be known, and they want to be heard, and they want to be supported,” said Brenda Corsentino, the nurse manager at the clinic who has served there for a decade.
Whatcom County Pregnancy Clinic exists to meet women where they are at and journey with them. When Kayla walked into the clinic, she carried some nervousness surrounding her uncomfortable situation. But she also held some hope and an open mind, she said.
The staff warmly welcomed her, and she took a routine pregnancy test for the nurses’ certainty this time. Then, she got an ultrasound performed by Brenda. She was six weeks along. Kayla left and felt comfortable and confident she would be given the support and encouragement she needed, she said.
About one week later, she began the clinic’s Earn While You Learn Campaign, where expecting mothers can learn about how to take care of themselves and their baby during and after pregnancy while also amassing all the baby supplies they could need.
“I was stocking up on diapers and bath toys and clothes,” she said.
She partnered up with a peer mentor who could provide guidance and help with processing everything. The mentors are women who can empathize and offer compassion, as many have also had an unplanned pregnancy, experienced healing from a past abortion, or at least have gone through a relatable storm of uncertainty themselves.
“She just put a lot of ease to my mind when I first met her,” Kayla said. “She just had a really great way of listening to my concerns and … I never felt judged.”
At the end of each of their weekly meetings, Kayla’s mentor prayed for her.
“I’m sure she prayed for me outside of the clinic too,” she said. “Usually the mentors gently ask, ‘Hey, before you go, can I pray for you? Or is there anything that you would like me to pray for for you?’ And most of the times they’re like, sure — even if they, you know, aren’t super religious or anything … just a nice way to close it out.”
While amassing baby products, learning, feeling empowered and “getting ready to put the work in,” Kayla still went to Whatcom Community College as a full-time student and continued working at BioLife as a plasma center technician, she said.
After going to Whatcom County Pregnancy Clinic for about three months, Kayla was working one day and hit a wall.
“It literally felt like a rock hit my head … I can’t do this. I can’t be a parent,” she said.
Kayla lived with her dad, a firefighter, while going to school. Her mom and siblings were all spread out. The biological father of Kayla’s baby was already raising two kids, and his parents lived in Japan. The imminent, daunting weight of raising a child by herself and the realization that she wouldn’t be able to provide the good life she yearned for him struck her.
Kayla unloaded this panic to her mentor, who then proposed exploring adoption. The option never crossed Kayla’s mind until that point, and said she felt a little apprehensive with the array of unknowns the choice presented. Her mentor encouraged her to go check out an adoption agency.
“I’m not the type of person to just blow something off without looking into it. I like looking at all my options and then kind of feeling out the best one in general,” Kayla said.
So, she checked out Bethany, a Christian adoption agency. She visited a few more times with the biological father to learn about what the adoption process was like. Once they started going, Kayla realized she wanted to go through with adoption, thinking, “Oh, this is actually really great. This is a great idea. Let’s do this!” she said.
“I don’t know if I would have chosen adoption if she didn’t point me in that direction.”
She felt heard by her mentor and grateful to be always received where she was at.
A friend of Kayla’s dad’s ex-girlfriend told her about a couple she knew living nearby desiring to adopt but through a private lawyer rather than an agency. Kayla went on a walk with them at Boulevard Park to get to know each other and thought they were great, but she tucked them into the back of her mind.
She and the biological father continued to look through Bethany at potential families mostly living around Seattle, but they eventually circled back to the couple she met.
“They’re in town, their house is awesome, they’re great people, they have five acres — like, this is cool, like, I want to grow up here. Let’s do it,” Kayla affirmed.
The couple invited Kayla and the biological father over for dinner one night and Kayla shared, “We want you guys to be the parents,” she said.
“Everybody cried … then, they told me that they had his name picked out for the last three or four years. Everything after that it … just kind of seems so easy,” Kayla whispered with some sweet disbelief.
Over the next few months, Kayla met with the adoptive parents and the private lawyer to set up terms and conditions for the adoption. Kayla asked them to make telling her son that he is adopted “the easiest part of his life as possible,” she said.
“You know in the movies, they always sit you down when you’re 13. Like, you’re already in the worst years of your life, they’re like, ‘You’re adopted.’ Why me?” she jokingly wailed. “Anything but that. Anything but that.”
Kayla ended up nine days late for her due date. She went into the hospital to get induced around 8 a.m., and her son was born at 11 p.m. Her parents, her siblings, the biological father and the adoptive parents were all there. After he was born, they all gathered around to meet the baby..
“I got to physically hand them the baby, and we all watched, and we all cried, and it was a lot of fun,” Kayla said.
The next morning, Kayla wrote her son a letter and held him. Around 4 p.m., it was time to go home.
“We all left, and I went home — that was it. Never, never regretted anything for a second,” she said.
Kayla graduated from Whatcom Community College the following spring and then from Western three years later with a bachelor’s degree in theatre with an emphasis in education.
Now she teaches theatre for middle and high school students in Bellingham. She’s married and has a 3-month-old daughter who was present with Kayla for this story’s interviews and bounced, cried, ate, sneezed, smiled, slobbered and burped throughout.
“During that time, I thought a lot about ‘Why is this happening to me? Why would God put me through this?’” Kayla said. “And it wasn’t until — I’m going to try not to cry — wasn’t until I got to give my son to them and physically see them holding him that was like — there’s that epiphany moment — like I literally felt it where I was like, ‘This is God’s purpose. This is why all of this happened … so that this family who has been trying for seven years to have a kid, now they do.’ I’ll never forget that feeling of realizing God’s purpose.”
She had certainty.