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Islamically we are married because weve got the new card done but were not registered as married, we are individual people. But if we told people we weren’t married, my child would grow up with the name hanging over her head as a ‘bastard.

You know gossip is the worst form of any physical or mental abuse. You know it can leave a person damaged for life you could say.

Traditional Asian girls are meant to get married, move in with their in-laws and that’s what usually happens. But its not very, some in-laws are all right, I can’t say my mother-law was a bad person, I do get on with her which is a good thing because sometimes you don’t.

Nowadays, more than not, daughters-in law are living in their own places and they go to visit their mother-law which is what I do. I have got no objection to do that but I am not going to move in with my mother-law, I want my own privacy, when I get up in the morning I want to be able to walk around in my nightie or whatever.

You just wanna be able to get up and have a few minutes in bed or I don’t know’ just be myself.

Whereas if you’re living with somebody else you’re gonna automatically get up, get dressed straight away, you’ve got to’ You know you don’t have your own privacy, you’ve got someone looking over your shoulder, whether they’re doing it intentionally or not.

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Yeah definitely I’ve always said, I can’t if shes 15, 16 the same age as I was, I can’t stop it, I can’t tell her she can’t do it, but I’d talk to her and say that it isn’t easy like unless you get like the support of your family, because I like did at the time and like she wouldn’t of had half the things in her life that she had if we hadn’t had that support and when I was younger it was like easier.

I thought it was easy having a baby ‘cos like you babysit all the time and like see these perfect babies and perfect children, but you don’t see the teething and the diarrhoea and the illnesses and sickness and the sleepless nights and I think that all girls about 12, 13 should have those dollies that look like real babies. I think that would stop a lot of teenage pregnancies.

‘cos it’s hard and some people can’t cope with it I mean theres quite a few people I know that are older than myself and they’ve had kids taken off of them because they can’t cope with them. And when you’re young you think that these little babies in their prams are nice and you don’t think about how much the prams cost and the nappies and the clothes and everything you need for a baby, it’s so expensive.

And it’s hard and sometimes you can actually see how people can do it but if you’re the right sort of person you think right, walk out of the room the babies safe in the cot, you count to 10, count to 100, like if you have to count to 100. Calm down and walk back in again. But it does get to the point sometimes when you think just shut up please just shut up.

That’s the most frustrating thing, when they’re screaming and you don’t know if they’re in pain or just having a winge and you check their nappy and the nappy’s fine and you try to give them a bottle and they don’t want that and just like everything. It just winds you up really, cos you don’t know what they want and it upsets you and gets you wound up so…

So its not easy being a mum?

No its not easy at all, not easy, I mean you have to have a lot of patience especially when they’re a baby and when they get older they back chat you and you have to have even more patience, that isn’t easy and all of it’ like people that babysit a lot can actually see that it isn’t that easy maybe they’d think twice about having, being more careful and things like that.

Who supported you?

Myself, I supported myself and my daughter, because I think really, like every time I want to talk about the pregnancy or the baby or if I was confused about something or I didn’t know what to do, they were like, ‘stop talking about it’, ‘don’t talk about it, I don’t want to know’, so I was like… I had to do everything myself.

My mum kicked me out when I fell pregnant with the little one and I don’t know, I just didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what to do and I stayed at her dads for a week because we were still together at that time and I went to the Council Housing Office and did everything myself within a day. Got on benefits, went to the Council and things like that.

How old were you then?

When I fell pregnant with [daughter] I was sixteen, I found out when I was seventeen, so I was nearly seventeen, I was six weeks pregnant when I found out. Just seventeen basically.

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Yeah, she, she takes care of my daughter a lot andYeah, she comes to my house like now that I’m pregnant, I’m not really fit. I sleep a lot, so shell come round and clean up for me and cook for me, and take care of my daughter for me.

My father is supportive financially, that’s it though. If I need money, I go to him but he wouldn’t talk to my daughter and take my daughter out and take care of her because he wouldn’t. But he would help me financially. And my mother-law, she does take care of my daughter.

So, regarding family planning are you planning to have more children?

No, that is it. Oh, we both definitely, we both wanted two children and now weve got girls we kind of think that’s quite a good time just to stop there. Young enough that we can still do stuff now and I really don’t want any more than two children. So, at the moment were not planning on having any more. But who knows what will happen in the future?

Oh, it’s security. Theres nothing nicer than coming home to, you know, him coming home from work, I love it. It’s the best time of the day when he comes in and obviously [daughter] is thrilled to see him and he wants to obviously talk to us and well, hes just my best friend. I’ve known him for so long that I don’t’ like worry about telling him, or speaking to him about anything.

We just get on really, really well, we hardly ever argue. You know, just weve got a really good relationship and so it’s really nice that I’m really close to his family as well ‘cos, since my dads gone it’s only like my mum and my sister which are actually my family around here but they feel like my family as well so i’m, you know, part of a huge family now, which is nice.

I mean, you know, hes a brilliant dad, very loving towards the kids. Hell do anything for them. Well he does, works so many hours that sometimes we never, we don’t see him because hes working so many hours. But yes, it’s definitely better, you know, theres more good points to it than there are bad, I have to say, in relationships.

But I’m lucky because hes quite a chilled out person, you know, things don’t really wind him up and easy going, hes ever so easy to get along with.