By Desilon DanielsA cry shatters the silence and her eyes instantly jerk open. Beside her,China NBA Jerseys, her blind mother stirs, but does not wake, as she quietly creeps out of the bed they share, towards her crying baby. With a breast to his mouth, she quiets him, her hands struggling to hold his tiny body as her eyes droop with sleepiness.For Vanessa (name changed), this is just another morning as a teen mother.At the age of 15, Vanessa became pregnant and now struggles each day to overcome all of the challenges of being a very young mother in Guyana. Now 17 years old and a mother to a baby boy, the young woman says that better sexual education and more dialogue about sex would have delayed her pregnancy and allowed it come at a time when she was better prepared to be a mother.Executive Director of the GRPA Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth (right) with GRPA Youth Coordinator Norwell HindsIn an interview with Kaieteur News, Vanessa explained that she had been a student of one of the top secondary schools in Guyana when she became pregnant. Her baby’s father, she said, was a minibus conductor in his early 30’s who actively pursued her until she gave in to him.“He used to hustle me,Jerseys NFL Cheap, but I never tek he on. I don’t know what went in my head, but I finally decided to be with him and tek him on,” she said. She said the relationship quickly became sexual. The first time, she said, a condom was used, but the second and third encounters had been with no form of protection.Vanessa relayed that she never understood why they had stopped using condoms and instead, she said, she had “just went with the flow”. She added that she did not go to a health centre for condoms because she was afraid her mother would “hear back about it”. Further, she said she was unaware of other forms of contraceptives at the time.Vanessa said most of her friends were sexually active and she would seek advice from the more experienced of the lot. She added she never wanted to speak to her mother about it as she did not feel comfortable about raising the subject.Further, she said, her older brother was very protective of her,Cheap Adidas NHL Jerseys, “especially when it came to boys”. She explained her father had died when she was 11 years old and her brother had been forced to drop out of school at the age of 15 to take care of their blind mother.The GRPA, located on Quamina Street between Main and Carmichael Streets, offers a variety of sexual health services including counseling, pregnancy testing and laboratory services“My mother also became pregnant when she was 14 so my brother really wanted me to avoid repeating the cycle,” she said. She admitted that she would have never spoken with him about sex.Vanessa noted that in Guyana views on sex were still outdated; many of her sexually active friends, she said, were just as scared as her to speak with their parents.“I had friends who were scared to talk to their parents; they would say how they afraid their mothers would kill them. Up to now I don’t think any of them told their parents about their sex lives,” Vanessa said.She added that teenagers were pressured by parents who wanted to believe their children were “better than the rest” and who would wait for marriage until sex.Vanessa said even after she became pregnant the conversation on sex had not been opened to her and instead she had been swamped with negativity from multiple sides. Fortunately, she said, her family was surprisingly supportive though they were clearly disappointed in her. Their support was drastically different from the reactions of many persons, she said.Her baby’s father, in particular, had become hostile and shut her out. He eventually began avoiding her and to this day he is mostly absent from their son’s life, except through a monthly stipend paid through the courts, she said.His immediate reaction on learning of her pregnancy was to suggest an abortion.“When I told him I was pregnant, he told me to throw it away and he said he would give me a pill to drink,” Vanessa recounted. She admitted that in that moment she had wanted to take the pill and kill her baby, but the older man had never come through on the promise. “I wanted to get rid of the baby; I wanted to just drink the pill and get rid of it and my mom would never know,” the young woman said.A TABOOAccording to Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth, Executive Director of the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA), Vanessa’s situation is not a new one as the subject of sex in Guyana is still considered a taboo.“Guyana is old-fashioned,Wholesale Jerseys, but that’s because we are still very much based on Victorian customs and norms, which are quite influential on how we think about sex and sexual behaviour,<a hr