Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows (13 page)

“I guess I was attracted to him because he was from a different culture than I was,” Kail admits. “Where I grew up everyone was white, so that was different. He also had a really solid family, so those are the two things I really remember being attracted to him for.” The couple began to date and soon became serious. “His grades started to slip...and his parents didn't like that and didn't really want him seeing me anymore,” Kail remembers.

Despite the disapproval, the young lovers continued their forbidden romance. They went on dates to the movies and the local roller skating rink. In time, Kail grew close to Jo's parents, Janet and Eddie, and his brother, Eddie Junior. Her relationship with Jo, however, soon began to unravel. “Really early into it we were fighting and we would break up off and on,” she says. Then, nine months into their turbulent courtship, Kail made a mistake with her birth control that would change both of their lives. “I was on the pill but I wasn't taking it correctly,” she admits. “Like, I'd miss three days and then take three pills and think that it would make up for it, stuff like that. I didn't have a way to get the pill without my mom knowing, and I didn't really know how to use it correctly.”

On the night of Jo's senior prom, in May 2009, Kail arrived at the Rivera house dressed in a sparkly, bright blue gown she had purchased using money from her after-school job at a Hallmark card store. She posed for photos with Jo before heading out to the dance. Hours later Kail and Jo had unprotected sex and suddenly Kail was 16 and pregnant.

“I never actually missed my period,” she says. “I remember about a week before [it was due], I woke up and I just kind of thought, 'I'm pregnant and I know it.' So I went and got a test and it came out positive. I couldn't really believe it. I called Jo and told him, 'You need to come over here and see this. I need to show you something.' So he came over and took one look at the positive test and just left. He didn't know what to say. He just got in his car and left. I think he needed time to process it all.”

And Baby Makes Three

“Growing up, I had seen girls with baby bellies and babies and I'd always think, 'How is that girl going to go to school with a baby?'” Kail remembers. “So that's how I felt when I got pregnant... Like, 'how am I going to continue my education?'” For months, the nervous teen tried to hide her pregnancy from friends and family. When Jo eventually told his parents, “Janet sat me down on the bed and told me, 'It's OK if you want to get an abortion, because you guys are so young,'” she recalls. “She was basically telling me to get an abortion. I still have resentment for that.” The exchange wasn't mentioned in Kail's 16 and Pregnant episode, though Janet appears in one scene expressing her feeling that they were too young to handle a baby.

____________________

“Janet sat me down on the bed and told me, 'It's OK if you want to get an abortion, because you guys are so young,' She was basically telling me to get an abortion. I still have resentment for that.”

- KAIL LOWRY
____________________

The news didn't go over any better at Kail's house. Fearing the worst, she never even told her mother about the pregnancy. “I always grew up saying that my mom would never know her grandchildren,” she explains. “I just kind of felt that she didn't deserve to know... But she had a feeling because she would drive me to school and I'd always make her pull over so I could throw up. She found out by hearing it around town I guess. When she finally did confront me about being pregnant, she was piss drunk and I just didn't respond at all.”

But Suzi's boyfriend did. He promptly kicked Kail out of the house, as her mother, whose name was on the lease, looked on, offering no support. “She just said 'You're going to be on your own,'” Kail remembers. “She never offered to help me or anything.” For the second time in her life, Kail found herself essentially homeless. When Jo's family agreed to take her in, Suzi was quick to sign over custody for the second time in three years. “His parents weren't thrilled but they knew the situation with my mom and figured this was for the best,” Kail says.

After settling into Jo's room at the Rivera family's nearly 4,000 square foot house, Kail began to take stock of her options. Abortion was never a consideration, she says. But adoption was. Ultimately Kail decided to keep her baby - mainly because she believed that Jo and his family “would always be there financially to support the baby.”

Kail Gets Her Close Up

During her first trimester, Kail - like so many other young girls - went online and found a casting notice for
16 and Pregnant
. “I wanted to do [the show] because there were six girls on the first season, and five of them had their parents behind them and supporting them - all of them except Catelynn,” she says. “I didn't have that. I didn't have a dad. My mom was a crazy addict, so I thought people could benefit from my story since it wasn't like the rest of the girls'.”

Within weeks, casting directors from MTV and 11th Street Productions came calling. Surprisingly, Suzi agreed to show up for the first round of interviews and offered her blessing. She wasn't, however, required to sign any of the official paperwork, because the Riveras were now Kail's legal guardians. Three months later, a six-man production crew was on their doorstep. “I don't think people actually knew I was pregnant,” Kail says. They might have just thought I was fat.”

Cameras trailed the usually shy mother-to-be all around town as she shopped for baggy clothes to hide her quickly growing baby bump. But the local Board of Education wouldn't allow MTV crews past the front door of her high school. As word of the production spread, people who had never spoken to Kail before were suddenly trying to become her new best friend. “People definitely treated me different because I was on the show,” she says. “To this day I still feel like they do.”

Reconnecting with Dad

As Kail coped with her newfound fame at school, she decided to make one last attempt to smooth things over with her father, who had since resurfaced back in Texas. Prior to being officially selected for the show, she was contacted through Facebook by an aunt she hadn't seen in more than a dozen years. After several conversations, Kail agreed to fly south in November 2009 to meet a handful of extended family members, and reconnect with the man who turned his back on her years earlier. MTV sent its camera crew along to document the emotional and awkward reunion. Kail hoped the trip would make her father want to be the parent she never had. Unfortunately, that's not how it played out.

“Even though he was my dad, he was still a complete stranger to me,” she says. “I had no idea who this person was, so I guess I wanted to meet him because I was curious and I needed closure. When I got there, things were just weird.” Ray, who was full of stories about road kill and kept a lock on his refrigerator to protect his supply of meat, was not exactly the stable father Kail had hoped for. “They didn't show it on camera, but right after I got there, my dad asked me to borrow $20,” she remembers. “That really pissed me off because, come on, I'm a pregnant 16-year-old girl! Why are you asking to borrow money? Supposedly he has like two Associates degrees, but he doesn't have a job and he's a moocher, so I didn't need him in my life. I've been fine without him, but I wanted to meet him to get closure.” Kail has not seen her father since.

Welcoming Isaac

Two months after the trip, Kail went into labor. “Jo and Janet worked in New Jersey, so that morning they had already left by the time my water broke at about 5 AM,” she remembers. “I thought I had peed my bed!” Alone at Jo's house without anyone nearby that she could call, Kail was forced to reach out to her mother for help. Five hours later, Suzi finally arrived. “She came over about 10 am and sat with me and then she realized that I was in labor and took me to the doctor,” Kail says. “If I could go back and do it again I wouldn't have allowed her to have any part in it at all. I got lucky and she was sober when it happened, because she's really crazy and could have been really drunk.”

At the hospital, things get chaotic extremely fast. Her tiny hospital room was packed with family, friends and intrusive cameras. “I remember telling one of the [producers] - who I had just met for the first time - to 'get the fuck out of my face' during one of my contractions,” she says. “I remember everyone talking and wanted to be like six inches from my face. I would have a contraction and I just wanted it to be quiet but it wasn't. When I gave birth there were two camera people, the executive [producer], a production assistant, the doctor, Jo, Janet, my mom, and like four of my friends in the room with me. My friends came in because they figured that there were already so many people there that it didn't matter. So that's like 15 people. It wasn't really a private moment, and it wasn't special, with so many people there it couldn't be.”

Isaac Elliott - whose name was misspelled on Kail's episode - was born on January 18, 2010. After his birth, Jo tried to make up for the way he treated his girlfriend during the pregnancy. “He could be really sweet and caring,” she says. The couple briefly became engaged, but soon encountered a new set of problems -- including a lack of privacy while living with the Riveras. “I felt like sometimes his parents would try to overpower us and raise Isaac the way they wanted him to be raised,” Kail says. “I think [Jo] being so close to his parents and me being used to being so independent caused a lot of problems in our relationship. I wasn't used to having anyone monitoring what I was doing.”

She also wasn't accustomed to having an audience of millions analyzing her relationship and parenting choices on television. The overall experience with her episode of
16 and Pregnant
“pissed me off,” she says. “I put my whole life out there, and they can't even bother to spell my son's name right?” Nevertheless, she eventually accepted an offer to continue her story on the spinoff
Teen Mom 2
. And after a little prodding, a reluctant Jo signed on, too.

The camera crews returned in June 2010, just as Kail and Jo's relationship began to flat line. This time the couple split for good and before long, Kail struck up a romance with coworker Jordan Wenner. That didn't sit well with Jo or Janet, who she once referred to as “a second mother.” By December 2010, Kail had moved out of the Rivera family basement, where she had been living after she and Jo had broken up, and into an apartment of her own.

“I think Janet was very hurt and upset with how I left,” Kail says. “I think she is still upset about it.” Kail says she felt bad, too, despite the fact that season one episodes of
Teen Mom 2
were edited to make it seem like she didn't. That Christmas, Kail wrote Janet a heartfelt letter, thanking her for all she had done. They tried to further smooth things over during the season one reunion special, which was taped in February 2011. But by then, things had gotten so bad with Jo that Kail refused to tell him where she and his son were living. Though viewers didn't get to see most of it, the couple had a huge blowup on stage while taping a segment with Janet and Dr. Drew Pinsky. Eyewitnesses say things got particularly heated when Jo criticized Kail for not telling him that she was dating Jordan, and continuing to hook up with him. Kail, in turn, revealed that Jo had cheated on her while she was pregnant -- with a 25 year old! Janet stepped in, aided by a team of MTV staffers, to try and stop the angry couple from airing any more dirty laundry.

But for Kail, the real damage was done long ago. By participating on
Teen Mom 2
, she has already exposed her most intimate moments to millions of judgmental viewers. She's also watched her private life - including reports Jo gave her a sexually transmitted disease, accusations she smoked marijuana during pregnancy, and rumors about multiple lesbian affairs in high school -- play out in tabloid headlines. So it's no wonder Kail was concerned that Javi might be nervous about putting his life on public display, too.

“At first I think he was a little apprehensive about dating me and being on the show,” she admits. Kail also reveals that MTV tried to make it look as if they were set up by mutual friends at a bowling alley, but their introduction really came while she was working at a retail clothing store called Buckle in the Lehigh Valley Mall. “Javi and his brother come in. I assume his older brother is his dad and that gets us laughing,” she recounts on her personal website. “Javi lies to me about what he was shopping for... I eventually learn that he hates graphic tees. At check out he asks to take me for ice cream and I tell him 'No.' LOL. Hard to see that looking back I turned him down! Anyway, from there he came into Buckle again and we started forming a friendship via
Twitter
and Buckle visits. Eventually, I gave him my number.” Kail reveals she tried to keep the relationship from MTV producers for months, “but then he started to become such a big part of my life that we couldn't hide it any longer. After a while, I had to tell them about him.”

Kail's relationship with Javi soon became serious, and the couple moved in together in 2012. However, the relationship hit a speed bump in the spring of 2012, when a fight between Kail and Javi escalated. The fight, which started due to a disagreement Kail and Javi were having in regards to filming, resulted in a frustrated Kail screaming and pushing Javi. MTV cameras captured the incident for an episode for the fourth season of
Teen Mom 2
.

“I felt like so many things were out of control and I didn't know how to handle that,” Kail told Wetpaint.com. “There was a moment where I take Javi's head and I shook it. I had a temper so bad, that I knew I was getting out of control.”

Although Javi quickly forgave her for the incident, Kail says she knew she had to seek help for the mental health issues she had been avoiding facing. Kail had known for a while before the incident that she, like her mother, suffered from bipolar disorder. However Kail had avoided getting treatment for the disorder because she didn't want to believe. After the fight with Javi, Kail knew she had to get help and is now seeing a therapist and taking medication.