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Ashleigh Graham found out she was pregnant the summer after she turned 14.

After she skipped a period, she and a friend went to Dollar Tree and picked up two home pregnancy tests. The first came out positive and the second came out negative.

Later, Ashleigh's doctor confirmed it -- she was five weeks and four days pregnant.

Ashleigh's friends and family were supportive. She had several friends who were pregnant at the same time, and the girls would all talk about baby names together.

Ashleigh eventually decided on the name Nevaeh -- "Heaven" spelled backwards.

Her mother and her circle of friends proved to be important to Ashleigh. The father of her baby was in prison for larceny, and he denied that the baby was his.

Of all the changes Ashleigh's body underwent during the pregnancy, one stood out: She was constantly hungry.

The young teen felt like she was eating every 10 minutes, which eventually became a problem at school, where she was scheduled to eat lunch at 1:25 p.m. every day.

When they heard about the dilemma, Ashleigh's teachers decided to let her eat and drink in class as much as she wanted.

They helped in other ways, as well, letting her use her cell phone to call home when she felt sick and asking her to run errands for them to get her up and moving during her last few months.

With her baby nearly two weeks overdue, Ashleigh went to Alamance Regional on a Tuesday night in March to have labor induced. Her mother and her best friend were by her side. It was a difficult birth.

Without warning, the baby's heart rate began to drop.

Ashleigh was terrified as the doctors and nurses turned her in various positions in response to the frantic beeping coming from the infant heart-rate monitor.

They were considering an emergency Caesarean section when the doctor determined the cause of the fluctuating heart rate: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck. Ashleigh's obstetrician told her to push.

Hearing her baby cry in the delivery room for the first time hit Ashleigh especially hard. She started crying, choking out a duet of tears with her screaming baby, then continued to cry as a nurse placed Neveah, her newborn baby girl, on her stomach.

Later, Ashleigh lay in her hospital bed with Nevaeh, finally alone and away from the bustling nurses and beeping machines. Ashleigh stared at the baby in her arms and Nevaeh stared back.

For the first time in nine months, the two could finally begin to get to know each other, and neither mother nor daughter could take her eyes off each other.

"That's my baby," Ashleigh kept thinking as she held her daughter. "I can't believe I just had this baby."

In time, Ashleigh went back to Williams, where her teachers welcomed her and accommodated her new needs as a student and parent. Ashleigh's mother would watch Nevaeh while Ashleigh was at school, but it soon proved hard for the young mother to be away from her daughter for so long each day.

She decorated one of her binders with pictures of Nevaeh, and sometimes she would sneak into the bathroom to call home from her cell phone, asking her mother about what Nevaeh had been doing.

Today, Ashleigh tries to find balance between her life as a teenager and her life as a mother.

The first time she went to a party as a new mother, things felt different.

"I can't drink anymore," she had to tell her friends. "I can't do any of that anymore. Just make a toast for me, too."

When Ashleigh began paying for Nevaeh's formula and diapers, she learned that she would have to find more affordable ways to have fun. Now she invites people over, plays music and dances at her house. She calls it "a party for free."

Next year, Ashleigh will start her sophomore year of high school.

After she graduates, she hopes to one day enroll in community college and earn a degree in cosmetology. Eventually, she wants to move out of Burlington, open her own hair shop and buy a house for her and Nevaeh.

"Nevaeh has changed me a lot," Ashleigh says. "If it weren't for her, I wouldn't even want to finish school. Now that I've had her, it makes me want to finish school and graduate and do something with my life."