Motherhood, health force maturity
This isn’t how it was supposed to be.
Sara Hall, who had been a sickly child and a so-so student, had envisioned a totally different life for herself. But then she got pregnant.
She was 15 and a sophomore at Cheney High School. Suffering since childhood from common variable immune deficiency (CVID), she had endured many illnesses – mostly upper respiratory, including eight bouts with pneumonia – and then her parents separated, with her father, Freeman Bailey, moving to Wilbur, and her mother, Sharrie Hall, moving to Spokane.
She shuttled between them. “And I was so tired of being sick, so I thought that if I had to be sick, I may as well go out and do things and have fun,” said Hall, who is now 17 and just about to graduate from Cheney’s Alternative Three Springs High School. “I rebelled, not against my family, but against being sick.”
When she discovered she was pregnant with Braiden, now 2, rebellion ended. So did childhood. And she got very focused.
“My mom told me how hard it would be, but that she would be with me,” Hall said. “She was right. It was hard, but now I can’t imagine any other life. I’ve gone from just being a teen to the responsibility of caring for someone who depends on me.”
Hall is earning straight-As in her senior year and concentrates hard on school work. She has some goals that depend on that.
She still goes back and forth between her mother’s and father’s homes and still has serious health issues to deal with – something she shares with her sister, Crystal, 22, who also suffers from CVID and has had pneumonia 20 times. The two of them have been studied at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Hall spends all her time outside of school with Braiden. She doesn’t date and doesn’t want to right now: “With going back and forth between Wilbur and Spokane, school, Braiden and my health, things just aren’t stable enough to bring someone else into the picture.”
Besides, it’s hard to hang out with people her own age. “It’s hard for us to relate,” she said. “They can’t relate to how mature I’ve had to become, and I can’t go back and forth between trying to be a carefree teen to being a young mother. It just doesn’t work.”
But she did take the opportunity to be a regular teen for just a moment this spring by attending her prom.
“Crystal was sick when her prom came around, so I took her to prom with me,” Hall said. “We got to do it together.”
This fall she plans to take classes at Spokane Community College to get some prerequisites under her belt so she can enroll in 2009 in a program there that will prepare for a career in a field that is near and dear to her. She wants to be a respiratory therapist.
Sharrie Hall, said that with a little help from her family, her daughter will make it: “She’s determined not to be another girl on welfare. She will stand on her own two feet. She’s doing it for herself and for Braiden.”
This is the life Sara Hall is envisioning now for herself, and she is working hard to make sure it’s going to happen.
Inside
A list of Three Springs High School graduates./11