Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows (8 page)

On December 20, 1995, when Amber was just five, Tonya gave birth to the couple's third child, a daughter named Candace. Less than a month later, the baby tragically died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Amber has admitted she never quite got over the loss. “I remember it like I just watched a movie yesterday,” she revealed during the
Teen Mom
season three reunion special. “I remember a stretcher coming in. I remember my mom screaming. I remember her on the edge of the bed. I remember my dad's reaction.”

Tonya, too, has haunting memories of her family's saddest night. She had just gotten off work and returned home, where her husband was looking after the kids. After checking on the newborn, she instantly knew something was seriously wrong. "I picked her up and just realized that she wasn't breathing,” the still-grieving mom revealed to Dr. Drew Pinsky as MTV cameras rolled. “She hemorrhaged from the nose. Immediately, I just checked out."

In the months that followed, Tonya struggled to lift herself out of depression, while Amber put on a brave face for her young classmates at Greenbriar Elementary School. The little girl, who loved Barbie dolls and wearing dresses, made friends easily, childhood friends say. "Amber has always had a fun-loving personality and so many friends she always stuck up for and was always loyal to," one told
RadarOnline
in 2010. "She talked to everyone and never thought she was better than anyone else." But that soon changed.

By the time she enrolled at North Side Middle School, Amber had become aggressive and frequently acted out. At 13, she started experimenting with drugs. "We would always have pills around,” Amber told Franco. “Everybody could get pills from everywhere. We would ditch school, stay around the house and take pills. It was my way of escaping and not thinking about my real life."

With their father in and out of the hospital for liver problems related to alcohol abuse - [he eventually developed cirrhosis] - both Amber and her brother began regular sessions with a therapist. In 2005, Tonya had an extramarital affair and decided to finally leave the family home, according to Franco. Shawn joined the Army and headed to basic training, while Amber, just 15, began dating Gary, one of his best friends. Despite their age difference - he is four years her senior - Amber finally believed she had found true love. They dated for two and a half years (and often neglected to practice safe sex) until the inevitable happened: Amber got pregnant. At the time, Shawn was deployed in Iraq and didn't find out until months later that his sister was not only pregnant, but had also decided to share her story on MTV.

“It wasn't really a big shock when I found out I was pregnant,” Amber told Anderson's
Herald Bulletin
in 2009, adding that she had always believed she would marry Gary and have his children. In fact, Amber seemed completely unfazed to have a baby on board, telling the newspaper, “It was just the perfect situation. It just happened a little sooner than we expected.”

At 18, Amber was the oldest girl chosen to appear during season one of
16 and Pregnant
. She may also have been the saddest. "She told me, 'I was stuck in a dead-end situation at school with no desire to study, a dying father and a mother who chose her boyfriend over me,'" Franco said. MTV cameras captured her dropping out of Anderson High School but made no mention of the fact that Amber had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. (She would later also be diagnosed with dissociative disorder, which caused her to “black out.”) producers left out many of the details of Amber's early life and her father's struggle with alcohol. (Her mother also had problems with booze, causing her to be arrested on Christmas Eve, 2007 for driving while intoxicated.)

On the day she was sentenced to five years in prison for her crimes, Amber told the judge she wished she had never agreed to do the show.

MACI WAS A CHEERLEADER, SOFTBALL STAR

Maci Deshane Bookout is a second-generation teen mother. Her older brother Matthew was born just weeks after mom, Sharon Galbraith, graduated from Hixon High School near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Against tremendous odds, Sharon - who married Maci's dad, Billy “Gene” Bookout that same year - managed to juggle two kids and college, eventually earning a Bachelor's degree. She quickly became Maci's biggest inspiration.

“I think Maci, in her mind, thought that she could do it, because we did,” Sharon revealed during the
Teen Mom
Farewell Special in 2012. The Bookout kids, just three years apart in age, were both popular with their classmates and involved in various sports. Maci was a cheerleader in middle school, rode dirt bikes and competed in beauty pageants. But softball was her true passion. She continued to play right up until becoming pregnant at age 16.

By the time MTV cameras set up shop at the family's Tennessee home in September 2008, Maci was already well into her eighth month of pregnancy. “At first, it was extremely awkward having people constantly hanging around the house,” she told students during a 2012 speaking engagement at Slippery Rock University. “In the beginning, I didn't understand what the big deal was because I'm just Maci. I never thought I was that interesting.”

Audiences disagreed. Her episode of
16 and Pregnant
- and future installments of
Teen Mom
- were chock full of drama between the pretty strawberry blonde and her always complaining ex-boyfriend, Ryan Edwards. One of the most popular guys at Ooltewah High School, Maci considered Ryan to be quite a catch and many of her classmate were green with envy. “Ryan...was THAT guy in high school,” classmate Melissa Powell wrote on her personal blog. “He was absolutely beautiful, I remember that clearly. I'm pretty sure he drove a huge, lifted truck. He played football. He was friends with the 'popular' people. Maybe he was the popular one.”

Like most girls at O.H.S., Maci was infatuated with Ryan from the start. “He was so cute, and I just wanted to look at him all the time,” she confessed to the Slippery Rock students. “He had a really pretty truck and, you know…the things that are just so important in your partner when you're 16.”

It took Maci just three short months to be overcome with passion and move their relationship into the bedroom. “I was the one who talked him into having sex with me,” she said. “Apparently, since I was a virgin, he was scared of me. I thought there was something wrong with me. But, you know, I finally talked him into it.”

What Maci forgot to talk about was birth control, and soon she began her journey into unplanned parenthood. “If you think of how cool it's going to be that I get to get married, and move out and have a family…[I] just look at the bright side,” Maci revealed in the casting tape she filmed for
16 and Pregnant
in 2008.

Unfortunately, Ryan, wasn't exactly ready to settle down so quickly. “Back then, I felt like it was just another relationship, nothing really serious,” Ryan revealed during the 2012 Farewell Special.

Two months had already passed by the time Maci discovered she was pregnant. She had taken a test after throwing up while taking a shower one morning, and it had come back positive. After telling her brother, Matt, Maci then had to decide how to break the news to her mother. She finally decided to tell her in a text message. “I stared at that text message for about 15 minutes before finally hitting send!” she revealed during a 2011 speaking engagement. Sharon and Gene were devastated. “That was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry,” Maci said during the
Teen Mom
Farewell Special. “The day I told him I was pregnant.”

Despite apparent strains in their relationship early on, Maci became engaged to Ryan on her 17th birthday. They often talked on camera about tying the knot, although both later revealed that they never believed the wedding would actually take place.

CATELYNN CARED FOR HER ALCOHOLIC MOTHER

“Catelynn had a tough childhood, but we did the best we could,” her grandmother, Judith Mitti told
Star
magazine in 2010. “There was some disfunctionality. I'm not gonna say that there wasn't. But [her mother] had a rough way to go.” Growing up in Marine City, Michigan - 63 miles from Detroit - Catelynn would often assume the role of parent, nursing her booze-loving mom after long nights at the bar. “I would put pillows underneath her head while she was passed out on the table,” the wise-beyond-her-years teen told
RadarOnline
in 2012. “I pretty much saw my mom drunk almost every day. I had to grow up really fast.”

The oldest of three children, Catelynn was born to 19-year-old April Lee Stotts and 22-year-old David Lowell on March 12, 1992. David, an auto plant factory worker, began pursuing April when she was just 17 and still in high school. She soon dropped out and the couple moved in together. Within a year, April had followed in Judith's footsteps and become a mom at age 19. As the young couple struggled to make ends meet, April's battle with the bottle began to tear them apart. According to her current husband, Darl “Butch” Baltierra, April started drinking regularly at age 14.

“Catelynn had a good life when she was a little girl and April and I were still together,” David insisted in an October 2010 interview with
Star
magazine. “But there was a lot of partying going on back then, and when I reached a point where I'd had enough, April wasn't ready to stop.”

David said he'd had enough by 1994, and packed his bags when Catelynn was just two years old. “There'd be drunks all over our house, and I was afraid for our daughter,” he said. “I tried to get custody of her but it's near impossible for a father to get custody in Michigan.” So he moved to Florida, remarried and had more children, while April continued to struggle with her addiction. April and Catelynn moved frequently, and during her early years, Catelynn lived in several different states, including Ohio and Texas.

As Catelynn began grade school, April became pregnant again with her second daughter, Sarah. (She later had a son, Nicholas, with a third man.) Despite their distance, David says he never forgot about his little girl. In 2001, he took April to court, claiming that she was neglecting their daughter, but the court dismissed his claim. Six years later, he arranged for Catelynn to move in with his parents. Her grandmother, Deborah, assumed the role of legal guardian.

Catelynn thrived in Florida but she eventually moved back to Michigan to be with her mother and attend middle school. Enter Tyler Baltierra: another troubled teen from a broken home, whom she first met in seventh grade music class. Almost instantly, the pair became inseparable. “I have loved her since the moment I saw her,” Tyler wrote on his website. “Her punk rocker hair and attitude matched perfectly for my edgy, hyper personality. I asked her why she fell in love with me and [she told me, and] I quote 'you could always make me laugh.'”

They've been together ever since - except for a few short breakups -and maintained their relationship even after Tyler failed the ninth grade and had to transfer to an alternative high school. In 2008, Catelynn introduced Butch to her mother. A year later, they married and the teens became step-siblings. Despite their unique family dynamic, Catelynn and Tyler remained inseparable. So it was no surprise when Catelynn became pregnant during her junior year at Algonac High School.

Today, the couple continue to defend their decision to place their daughter, Carly, up for adoption. “We were so young, and we didn't have anything. I didn't have a job, a car or any money to raise a baby. I didn't have the things a child needs and deserves,” Catelynn told Bethany Christian Service's Lifeline magazine in 2012. “And I didn't have mental stability. I was so young. I definitely wanted Carly to be raised in a Christian family. I wanted her to be in a different environment and not around the stuff I had seen growing up.”

Catelynn has said her relationship with April became so bad at one point that she was forced to move in with Tyler and his mother, Kim. But through the most difficult of times, her father remained one of her greatest sources of love and support. Throughout the pregnancy, he offered advice and guidance to his daughter and her boyfriend (who he didn't actually meet until 2011 during an episode of
Teen Mom
.)

“It was only him, Kim and my grandparents that supported us,” Catelynn said in a 2011 interview. “Even though [MTV] didn't show it, my dad was really supportive when I was pregnant. He would tell me that I was doing the right thing and all that kind of stuff.”

WHAT ABOUT TYLER?

Like Catelynn, Tyler knew all too well how addiction could wreak havoc on a family. His father, Butch, had been in and out of jail for most of Tyler's life. His mother, Kim, raised Tyler and his sister, Amber, single-handedly, before finally leaving Butch when Tyler was just four.

Still, Butch insists he tried to spend as much time with his children as possible. “Tyler was a riot,” he remembers. “He is a Batman freak [so] we bought him a Batman suit for Halloween. He was about four, I think. When he put that mask on and that suit, he really thought he was Batman. He would hit the walls, slam the screen open. I said 'Tyler, stop.' And he says, 'I am not Tyler. I'm Batman.'”