Ava King, 16 year-old single mother of two from Indiana, has more than 117,000 followers on TikTok where she shares videos of her son, Jordan, 23 months and daughter, Avaeya, eight months.
Ava has documented how she balances going to school and looking after her young children with the help of her family after having two unintended pregnancies in less than two years.
In her most viral video of 2021, Ava presented viewers a behind the scenes look at a day in her life as a teenage mother explaining in the caption “it’s a tough life, but I love my kids”. The inspirational TikTok was filmed after lunch and showed Ava in a classroom taking an end of semester test on a laptop. After giving her laptop back to her teacher for the day, she met up with her best friend who drove her to pick up her kids.
Ava, who is working to finish school early has recorded 88% on the exam and finished a credit.
‘Shout out to my grandma for watching them,’ Ava captioned videotape of her friend holding her charming daughter. She later noted in the comments that they are just close friends and not a duo.
They then buckled the kids up in their car seats and drove to Ava’s home where she lives with her mother and sisters. The video pleasantly over with the little boy sucking on a pacifier and embracing with his mother but it only comprised a minor slice of her day.
Ava was met with some blame for being a teenage mother in the comments but she also received ample support in reaction to the video which has been viewed more than 8.6 million times.
In her preceding videos, she demonstrated how she makes her children breakfast and gets them dressed in the morning. After her grandmother picks them up, she heads off to school.
Ava said that she did not have her period and it is like her period was gone. She was actually 13 years old when she had first become pregnant. She said that she didn’t really have any other symptoms and recalled that she was nervous. She had actually taken a Plan B pill, but she doesn’t think she took it in the right amount of time, so it didn’t work.
Ava, who lost her own father to heroin when she was 11, met her children’s dad at one of his basketball games a few years later and fell head over heels for him. In her TikTok videos, she alleged that he cheated on her throughout her pregnancy and she fought with post-delivery depression after she greeted her new friend Jordan in February 2020.
Six months later, Ava learned she was pregnant with Avaeya. She said that the second time was the most traumatic thing in her life. She remembers crying and crying and crying because she could do one. Ava said she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to give her son sufficient love and she remembered screaming and crying to her mother because she didn’t know what to do.
Critics have slammed her for not being on birth control following her first unplanned pregnancy but she insisted she was on the pill at the time. She said that she was on birth control with Avaeya and it failed and it is just what happens sometimes. She believes that she was just one of the unlucky ones.
Ava explained that she is no longer in a relationship with her children’s father because they both have things they need to work on. She said that they were toxic, but still they will always love each other in a sense. She said that she will always love him and care for him. She further said that she can’t be with him unless something changes.
Ava also has a YouTube channel with 62,7000 subscribers where she vlogs about her life as a teenage mother in the hope of helping others in her situation. She has admitted that the most challenging thing of being a mom is the fact that it never ends.
