Free Never Too Late by Amber Portwood, Beth Roeser

an addict by the time I got pregnant, so it wasn’t a struggle at all to quit. I only say that based on the experiences I had later, when I was
really
an addict and it was
really
the battle from Hell to get off of drugs. But at that time, for the pregnancy, no big deal. Even if I had been more addicted, all I had to think of was the fear of that baby coming out with something wrong with her. The thought of it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want to do anything to harm my child.
    The point is, I didn’t touch a damn thing during my pregnancy. Didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t take a pill. And it paid off, because Leah came out healthy, beautiful, and smart as hell.
    My parents ended up being really supportive of the pregnancy. After they got over the shock of their daughter not being a virgin, I think they were able to calm down once they saw us moving out into a nice townhouse, getting a van, and working our asses off. When I couldn’t work anymore I would clean, clean, and clean. We’d do things like go out to rummage sales looking for cute baby clothes and baby stuff. For not having a whole lot of money, we did the best we could do. And I think we did a really good job. To this day, I’ve never had a parent pay one bill of mine or hand me money. We did it all ourselves.
    I want people to know this: you can do it if you have to. The secret is just that you really have to work your ass off. That’s all there is too it. There’s no trick or hack or coupon that’s going to make it easy. It sucks to find ways to support a family when you don’t have money to burn. But you can do it if you have to. Pick up more hours, get overtime, get more work. I remember one time when he came home with nine hundred dollars from all the extra shifts he’d gotten. Back then that was so much money to us it was unbelievable. We were excited to the point that he spread the money on the table and took a picture with his phone. We were just staring at it like, “That’s a lot of money.” It was the most exciting thing in the world. We were going, “We’re gonna go out to eat!”
    We used that money to help pay off a bunch of bills and buy a good van. We thought that van was the coolest thing in the world. We were really responsible with the money that came in back then.
    Still, people can believe it or not, but we had absolutely no idea the show was going to turn into the huge thing it is today. We literally thought it was one of those one-time things MTV always does, like
True Life
, where we were going to be on TV for a little while and everyone would forget about us afterward. Real people are featured on those MTV specials all the time and don’t get famous. We had no way of knowing people were going to jump on it like they did or that it would become this huge phenomenon. It’s almost mind-blowing to think of how innocently we were looking at the whole thing.
    MTV started the filming in the townhouse. They pretty much filmed us moving in together. It always amazes me to think about how many firsts he and I shared together from those years. We had all of the big firsts together, to be perfectly honest. And when it came to the giant first of having a child together, we just worked so damn hard to do it right. We helped each other with money, organized our finances, did everything we could to be responsible. After growing up with nothing, we were so excited to start out on our own, to be able to actually make money and buy the things we needed and wanted. We did a really good job at it.
    During that time I really missed my brother. I wished almost more than anything he could be there with me, but he was stuck in the Middle East with the army. There was nothing to do about that. Still, he stayed in touch with me as much as he could and his support always meant a lot to me.
    In fact, even though he was all the way overseas, he found a way to be with me in the delivery room. In the footage of me giving birth on
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