‘Teen Mom’s Amber Portwood Admits She Faked a Pregnancy Scare on ‘The Next Chapter’

Did Amber Portwood have a pregnancy scare on Teen Mom: The Next Chapter? Well yes….and no. There was plenty of drama going on with Amber as her daughter Leah celebrated a major milestone without her. Spoilers ahead for Season 2, Episode 17 of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter “Two Steps Forward Ten Steps Back.”

We started the episode with Leah getting a car ahead of her 16th birthday, and while Leah’s dad, Gary Shirley, and his wife, Kristina Shirley, had thought about involving Amber in the decision, she’s gone radio silent on them.

“A person with bipolar disorder, there’s ups and downs,” Gary explained. “And when she’s up, she’s feeling good, she might think everything’s perfect and want things a certain way, like, ‘Oh, I really am sorry, but now I want you to instantly forgive me for years and years of abandonment.’ It don’t work that way.”

Kristina has really stepped into the role of Leah’s mother over the past few years, with the teen even calling her “mom” as she thanked her for the car. “For the longest time, Leah called me Kristina and I would say the last couple of years, it’s been mom,” Kristina admitted. “There’s always room for Amber and being a mom isn’t just taking them to school, doing homework, taking them to appointments. It’s being there every day, through all the troubles and the happy times and everything.”

But what’s going on with Amber? It’s at this point in the episode that the camera crew brings us to Amber’s house to see what she’s been up to — except she won’t answer the door unless a producer brings her a pregnancy test. Returning with the test, we get a telling conversation between Amber and a producer picked up on his mic.

“I’m freaking out,” she tells the crew member. “Can we just do this tomorrow before I cry and go sit in the corner? Don’t want all of them in here.” When her producer asked if she thought she was pregnant, the Teen Mom star answered, “It’s possible. It was an ex,” adding, “I’m freaked out right now. I’m scared.”

At first, I thought there was going to be a new Teen Mom baby, but when the crew returned later to film Amber, she admitted there was no pregnancy scare — she didn’t even take the test. She said she just wanted to get out of filming that day due to the state of her mental health.

“There’s been many times in my life where I’ve had to lie in order to get out of doing things because I’m not able to get ready, get dressed, move around, do anything,” she told her producer. “You just lie to people and say, ‘I’m busy, I have this sickness,’ you want to make up something to where they’re like, ‘We’re not going to do anything,’ ‘You don’t have to film.’”

Amber said she’s been in a dark place since the end of her engagement to Gary Wayt, who disappeared briefly last season amid chatter online that Amber might have killed him. “I’m more than heartbroken. I’m f—ked up from what he did to me,” Amber said. “We’re talking trauma. Being told you’re a murderer and thinking your fiancé is dead. I did not sleep for four days, I did not eat.”

Amber added she’s really been struggling to be a mom to her daughter Leah and her son James, who lives with his dad Andrew Glennon. She said that her relationship with 6-year-old James is “magic” but with Leah, it’s a lot different. “With my daughter, she doesn’t want to be around me,” she explained. “I’m understanding right now that I don’t have a choice.”

But what does the future hold for Amber? “[I’m] trying to figure out how I’m gonna wait for my daughter and not be a horrifically depressed person,” she said. “I’ve never been a mom that didn’t care. Just a f—ked up mom.”

This article was adapted from the latest episode of PopCulture Social Call, streaming weekdays on PopCulture.com’s YouTube channel. You can now watch this episode, which is embedded in the above article.