Media personality Natalia Andoh has recounted the moment she discovered she was six months pregnant at the age of 19 while living with her parents, highlighting the challenges of being a single mother. Given societal standards in Ghana and across Africa for young girls, Natalia’s experience underscores a fate often viewed as taboo.

In a candid conversation with MzGee on Just Being Us, Natalia shared that her pregnancy was a stark departure from her parents’ expectations for her as a teenager.

“I could not tell my dad. No way. In my mind, I pictured that he would just slap me, and I would collapse and die,” she recalled.

Natalia explained that the fetus was too far along for her and her boyfriend, who took her to the hospital when she fell ill, to consider abortion. “I was a teenager. When I got pregnant, I was 19, and he was 20. When we found out, if it had been only two months, maybe we would have just gotten rid of it and lived our lives,” she shared.

Reflecting on her naivety, she added, “I lived with my parents when I got pregnant, and I didn’t even know I was pregnant—that’s how unaware I was. As a teen, I was very skinny. Nobody knew I was pregnant; we all didn’t know. When I realized I was pregnant, it was after my baby daddy came to my house when my parents had gone out, and we had a lot of sex again, unaware of the pregnancy.”

Natalia also discussed the influence of her friends, who had engaged in sexual activities before her, making her feel left out during conversations about sex. This led her to seek guidance from them instead of her parents.

“Parent need to have more open conversations with especially their daughters. My parents are amazing, they did everything they had to do but I think for me, where there was a bit of a problem is I didn’t have anybody have conversations with me about sex and all of it so I sought it from friends,” Natalia tells MzGee.