By DANIELLE SHAPIRO
STAFF WRITER
HERALD NEWS

Meet four teenage mothers trying hard to overcome obstacles and beat the odds

Kristy Santos had something to tell her father. She gathered the strength to sit him down but didn't know how to tell him. It was serious.

He asked if she was a lesbian.

"No," she told him.

Did she have a boyfriend?

"Yes."

So, she wasn't a lesbian, she had a boyfriend and, he said, he was pretty sure she wasn't pregnant.

He was wrong. She was four-and-a-half months pregnant. The two didn't talk again until a month before the baby was born.

With her pregnancy, Kristy, 16, joined thousands of girls across the country who have become teen parents. In 2006, the year Kristy conceived her daughter, teen birth rates were up for the first time since a steady decline began in the early 1990s.

READ MORE: http://www.myheraldnews.com/view.html?type=stories&action=detail&sub_id=37505

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