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Hannah Ellis was nervous; she had missed her period.

Not knowing what to do, the then 15-year-old went to the Teen Health Center at Patrick Henry High School.

There, she found out that she was pregnant.

“ I guess part of me knew,” she said .

About a year and a half later, Ellis, who is now 16, can talk about that day with a lot more ease .

“It just hadn’t sunk in yet,” she said recently during lunch at Patrick Henry, where she is a junior. “After I found out, I just sort of … walked back to class and sat there.”

She remembers sitting silently all throughout her biology class. The lesson of the day was genetics.

“I probably should have paid more attention,” she said.

Sharing the news

When Ellis found out that she was pregnant, a nurse explained her options .

The decision wasn’t easy.

“At first it was a no-brainer,” Ellis said. “I would keep it and it would be great.

“Then I decided I didn’t want it. But then I wanted it again.”

In the end, Ellis kept the baby.

“I think I always knew I would end up having him,” she said.

The part that came next — telling her boyfriend and their families — was difficult, Ellis said.

“I just told him, there was no avoiding it,” she said.

Ellis’ boyfriend and the father of the baby, Michael Mikulak, took the news better than she expected.

“We obviously didn’t plan it. But he acted so great about it,” Ellis said.

Despite being nervous when she told him, she can’t help but smile as she remembers her boyfriend’s gallantry.

“No one was thrilled about it, but he was there for me the whole time,” Ellis said.

But her mother didn’t take the news as well.

“She sent me to my room,” Ellis said.

After the initial shock wore off, Ellis’ mom promised her daughter that she would take care of her anyway that she could.

“I really love my mom. I still can’t believe how great she was about it, and still is,” she said.

9 hard months

The next nine months of Ellis’ life were difficult.

She said that she had prepared herself for the worst; the changes to her body, missing school and giving up time with her friends.

But she didn’t expect some of the odd things that happened.

For instance, teachers would tell her about a test she had missed and then ask to feel her stomach for the baby’s kick.

“No one was really ever mean to me,” she said while eating lunch at Patrick Henry’s cafeteria. “I don’t know what they were thinking, but everyone always just seemed really excited about it. Honestly, I didn’t care what people thought. I just hated the attention.” She takes a sip of her juice box. “I really don’t like attention.”

Ellis missed out on activities while she was pregnant. She wanted to be in the school play but missed auditions. And, she had to give up ROTC.

After her baby was born Jan. 1, Ellis took two months of maternity leave from school. A teacher brought schoolwork to her once a week so she wouldn’t get behind.

Once her leave was over and she was able to return to school, Ellis said it was nice to see everyone again and get back to feeling normal.

“I’m really lucky. My friends can still sleep over sometimes, I still have the same curfew as I did before,” she said, although she added that sometimes she goes home earlier to see or feed her son .

Baby Grayson

Grayson is now 10 months old.

Mikulak, 18, is in Illinois, where he’s enrolled in basic training for the Navy. Ellis and Grayson only get to see him every few months. He calls when he can and writes her a letter every day.

But the military only sends mail out once a week, so she receives all his letters on Saturday.

“I really like Saturdays,” she said, giggling softly like an infatuated school girl.

Ellis has no income right now and relies on Mikulak and her mother to support her financially.

And without Mikulak around, Ellis also relies on her mom to help care for Grayson.

As angry as her mother was when she first found out her daughter was pregnant, Ellis says that her mom now “racks up a lot of baby-sitting time.”

Ellis is preparing for Grayson’s first Halloween, when they’ll go trick-or-treating together as Pokeman characters.

Her eyes light up as she describes to her friends at lunch the exact way that Grayson’s costume will fit and about how “ferocious” he’ll look.

“We won’t go very far, but I want to remember his first Halloween,” she said.

Ellis warns teens who are sexually active to be careful, but she still says she has no regrets.

“Well, of course if we had waited it would have been… I mean, if we had planned it…” she pauses trying to think of the right word, then has a sudden realization.

“ I love Grayson, he’s my baby,” she said. “I wouldn’t change anything because if the situation was different, then Grayson would be different.

“He’s just this beautiful, miracle, ball of joy. He’s —” at a loss for descriptive words about Grayson, Ellis makes a little baby noise.

It could be the noise of a child, or the sound of her elation at having the child in her life.