’16 and Pregnant’ Star Abygail Struggles With Her Unplanned Pregnancy Following Her Dad’s Death in Exclusive Sneak Peek

Abygail never expected to have to put her ambitions on hold to become a mother when she was only 16, and she definitely never expected to navigate this part of her life without her father. In a PopCulture exclusive sneak peek of Tuesday’s all-new episode of 16 and Pregnant, the Nevada teen opens up about the difficult emotions she’s been dealing with while expecting her first child with boyfriend Adrian.

Abygail didn’t think she would be able to get pregnant with her IUD, but what her doctor thinks is a rare event in which the intrauterine device twisted and implanted into her uterine tissue resulted in the 16-year-old honor student’s unexpected pregnancy. Having graduated high school two years early to attend college, welcoming a baby definitely wasn’t in Abygail’s life plan at this age, which she admits to Adrian in PopCulture’s exclusive preview for Tuesday’s episode.

“I wasn’t mad, I was upset,” she tells her boyfriend when asked about her initial reaction to the news. “I just had this whole plan of how I wanted my life to go and then ‘boom,’ all the plans were just… meant nothing. It was just really hard to wrap my head around and accept that this is it. My whole life is changing.” Adrian’s support from “day one” has made it “a little easier” for the teenage mom to put things on hold, but she’s still struggling with the milestone moment having recently lost her dad to suicide.

“I feel like it’s a really big moment in my life and my dad not being there, that’s been something that’s been kind of tough for me since I lost my dad,” she admits. Abygail’s parents split when she was a kid, and while her dad remarried and moved away before his death, the college student pushed herself academically so that her dad would be proud.

Having been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, Abygail said she’s in a “really good spot” mentally due to being in therapy for the “majority of [her] life,” which she says “helped me navigate my feelings a lot better than I would have done on my own.” Even with that, the mother-to-be worries “all the time” about mental illness, especially “all of [her dad’s] untreated issues being passed on” to her and her future kids. For more of Abygail’s story, watch 16 and Pregnant, airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on MTV.

If you or someone you know are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.