Amanda van Scoyoc

This is a photo of Damaris with the cast she made of her pregnant belly. In this photo she a beautiful 8 months pregnant.

Damaris Interview
January 17, 2008 4:45PM.

Damaris: My name is Damaris Nevarez. I am nineteen years old. I’m from Puerto Rico… I am seven months pregnant.

Ok, I’m going to talk about the first time I got pregnant and why. Ok, the reason why I even tried to check if I was pregnant was because I missed my period for a whole month. It wasn’t there. I got a urinary infection with that. My mom said to me “You’re pregnant.” I said “No I’m not” and she said “Yes you are.” The first time she got pregnant with my brother she got a urinary infection too. So then I was like, “Ok let me just find out.

So the next day I was working so my boyfriend came into work with me. When I had my break, he actually went to John’s pizza to get us something to eat and I went to the store, Compare. I bought a pregnancy test. He was waiting for me at John’s pizza. We ate. We were kind of quiet. And we were just nervous. I was like, “Don’t worry we’re not pregnant. We’re just not.” And we went back to Roca. I went straight to the bathroom. I didn’t really wait and it came back negative. It was like a relief for him, you know. Then it came out positive. I let it sit wait a little bit, and it came out positive. And of course, I was really happy and he was too, but we were nervous cause we knew our life was going to change, and I didn’t know how other people were going to take it. I don’t really care about what other people say or my family but they actually took it really really good.

Interviewer: How so?

Damaris: My mom was happy. My sister was excited too. Everyone was excited. This is the first time his family is going to be grandparents and aunts and uncles. They were really excited too. So the first person I told was him, and then he called his brother and told his brother that he was going to become an uncle. His brother was really excited. It was a good day. It wasn’t bad, but it was hard to keep the secret, like I wanted to keep it a secret, but I couldn’t I wanted to tell everyone.

Interviewer: (looking at photos in her journal) Were these pictures taken when you first found out you were pregnant or later?

Damaris: I believe these pictures were taken a day or two after I found out I was pregnant. Yeah I took a picture of that pregnancy test that I took. I wanted to keep it but it smelled really bad. So I was like, “No, I’ll just throw it away.”

Yeah I was really excited. I was so happy I couldn’t believe I was pregnant. I felt kind of good because I thought at least I’d beaten both my sisters because my first sister got pregnant when she was fourteen and the other one got pregnant when she was 18. I was 19 when I got pregnant.

Interviewer: I guess the only other thing we should do is (talk about) how you feel at seven months? Cause then when we do other audio recording…

Damaris: Um, I can’t complain about my pregnancy. I feel very well actually. I believe the baby has been very very good. She has never bothered me at all. Um, ever since I was like a month… well you know I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t even throw up puke or anything. Throughout my whole pregnancy I haven’t even puked. I eat a lot of food. I used to eat a lot before but not I eat a bit more. It’s been great. Even now at 7 months it still feels great. I feel a bit bigger. It’s a little bit harder for me to move around the bed and to get up from the bed it’s a little bit harder for me. To bend down. If I want to bend it’s a little hard. I have to squat. Is that how you say it? Squat? Yeah, um to pick up something… The stairs, I used to go up like 12 stairs like it was nothing. But, now it’s as if I did 2 miles just getting up those stairs…