Teen Pregnancies

Photo by Ed Yourdon. Courtesy of Flickr.com

In teen pregnancies, since the girls is still growing, the body has less energy both for growth and reproduction. The body of the mother and the developing fetus are competing for the same resources. Statistics show that babies born to teens are with lower weight  than babies born to mature women. There are views that this is due to lack of prenatal care and socioeconomic  circumstances than to maternal age.

Even when there is enough food and the living conditions are good, the body is not able to provide enough energy both for the growing body of the mother and the fetus, which results in low birth weight in babies born to teens.  It is supposed that women are biologically designed to keep growing at the expense of a fetus, even when there is available food and good living conditions.

So there are two issues which make teen pregnancy risky – socioeconomic factors and incomplete maternal growth.

Another important issue to be considered is that there are two groups of teens. The early teens are ages 13 – 14 and upper ages are 18-19. The early teens and the late teens have completely different organisms. By the age of 18, the woman’s body is mature. From an obstetric’s point of view the expected outcome for an 18 year old pregnant woman and a woman in her 20s is the same.

Other factors which are important when researching teen pregnancies and births is the rate of infant mortality – very low birth weight (under 1500 gm) and very early delivery – before 32 weeks is noticed in early teen pregnancies (13-14). By the age of 15-16 (middle teens) the birth weight of babies is getting normalized as well as the delivery timing.

In conclusion, when talking about teen pregnancies we have to be concerned about ages 13 – 15 years.