"It wasn't planned, but a slip," she said. "When I told him he tried to persuade me to have an abortion, but I knew that wasn't right for me. I'd always been against that, and so I realised I had to have the baby.

"Eventually he came round to the idea, and he told me that he would always be in the baby's life. But he hasn't been since my baby, Leyton, was about nine weeks old."

Jade was an apprentice hairdresser at The Mop Shop in Woodston, earning £80 a week, when she fell pregnant after dating her boyfriend for nine months.

She was used to living her life on her own terms, going out when she fancied it, which was, more often than not, every night.

Now her life is very different.

"Having Leyton, who is now nine-and-a-half-months-old, was good for me in a way because he made me focussed," she said. "I knew I had to get back to college and study so that I can get a good job and give him a good life."

Jade's life now is a tough one, and one that would have been even tougher without the support of her mum, Sue.

Jade's day begins at 7.30am, when Leyton wakes up and she gives him breakfast, gets him ready and drops him off at nursery in Fletton while she goes to college.

She picks him up at 5.30pm, comes home, makes his tea, and he's in bed for 8pm. She's in bed half an hour later. "My best friend lives next door and we often see her going out," said Jade.

"But I can't do that. At the moment my social life revolves around my friend's 18th birthday parties. And some of them are starting to drive. But I can't do that because I haven't got the money."

So far she has completed her part one in manual bookkeeping, is on the way to upping her English and maths key skills from Ds to Cs, and is looking forward to studying for an NVQ Level Two in business administration from September.

"A lot of teenage girls think that having a baby is easy," she said. "But it's not. You have to be thinking about them all the time, be there for them whenever theyneed you, and things like money and housing are a struggle.

"At the moment I live with my mum, but that can't go on, and I've got to find my own place. The city council has said I will get a house or a flat, but they're not sure when, and I might have to go and live in a hostel."

"I have always been very keen that Jade realises that Leyton is her child and not mine," said Sue (54). "It's hard for me to comment, really, because I have never had an unplanned pregnancy, and I've had five children.

"I didn't want to have a teenage mum in the family. I sat down and talked to Jade about it when she was younger, and you try to get your kids to do the right thing, but then they go off and do what they want and live how they want to live.