Teenager Wu Yanting blogs almost daily, opening her world to others.

Like other Net-savvy youth, her online journal shows whimsical cartoons and photos of herself.

The 18-year-old writes about shopping, the latest movies, going to the arcade with her pals - and her baby.

Ms Wu is a teenage mum, and her blog features wedding photos of her and her 18-year-old husband, and videos of their baby son, three-month-old Xavier.

In fact, a small community of 40 to 50 teen-mum bloggers has sprung up here, attracting the curious, empathetic and tongue- waggers.

Their interlinked blogs, some with posts dating as far back as 2005, chronicle their poignant journey - from pre-marital sex to pregnancy to childbirth, and the difficulties faced in raising a family.

There are the married ones, with equally youthful husbands. Others are single mums determined to keep their babies.

Most write emotionally about how they found out about their pregnancies. Some who just delivered their babies have even put up online polls asking netizens to vote for their preferred baby names.

This unusual network of blogs came to notice recently when the issue of teen pregnancy among Singaporean girls was raised in the forum pages of online portal Stomp.

The thread, whose links to these blogs have since been removed, had generated over 48 pages of comments from netizens in the past week.

Some showed empathy for the girls' decisions while others labelled them as 'silly', 'irresponsible', 'cheap' and 'the shame of society'.

One critic, going by the online moniker ikashi_oppa, wrote: 'These girls are really daring. (They) even dare to create a blog to publicise their shameful doings.'

Others wrote in their defence. One forum writer, 'AvatarIcy', who claimed she knew of two teen mothers, said: 'Yes, there will be challenges ahead. No income yet, balancing studies with family, housework and baby as well as some wagging tongues full of venom directed at them...

'But...they are normal people just like you and me with feelings and emotions.'

Indeed, one 16-year-old mum, in her blog, wrote of how she felt abandoned by the father of her child: 'Remembered when you said, 'let's bring up baby together', everything was like so perfect, but not so true after all.'

Ms Wu, who started blogging when she found out about her pregnancy last year, had felt 'extremely angry' about hurtful comments.

But she decided later that such people 'only judge the book by its cover'. She felt she had made the best of her situation by getting married and keeping the baby. 'They don't know what hardship we've gone through just for our little one. Their negative comments will only make me stronger,' she said.

On her decision not to have an abortion, she said she 'did not want anyone to call me a murderer'.

Some of the young mums have gone on to forge closer ties among themselves.

One group goes swimming, shopping and plays mahjong together, all with babies in tow.

One of the older ones in this group, 22-year-old Thai-Chinese Daw Chew who left school at Secondary 3, said she has made many good friends through her blog. She married her 27-year-old husband last year and they have a nine-month-old daughter.

The young mums also communicate via e-mail or exchange instant online messages regularly, and encourage one another.

The poignancy of their struggles is also evident in the blogs, with some describing the hardships in raising the baby alone and of having husbands in national service, and the difficulty of finding part-time jobs.

One mother, who declined to give her name, shared that she had to stop attending school because of her pregnancy, although her school made special arrangements for her O levels last year.

Like her, Ms Wu, who quit school when she was 14, said that 'having not enough sleep and time' was the biggest problem faced. Ms Wu is at least fortunate in that her in-laws - with whom she lives - help to look after her child.

'Of course I have a little bit of regret. Who doesn't want to play more at our age?' she said.

Ms Chew said: 'I want to go back and study but, with a baby, it's hard to do that as I need money and someone to help me look after my baby.'

Dr Carol Balhetchet, clinical psychologist and director of youth services at the Singapore Children's Society, said that - with today's teens having grown up in the Internet age - it seems natural that young parents, particularly mothers, want to blog about their experiences. 'When you are a single or married teenage mother, it is an incredible step to take so early in life.'

Still, she had a word of caution for the teen-mum bloggers. 'You may attract stalkers, or people will find very private, personal things to attack to make you lose confidence in yourself and what you started out to do,' she said.

She added that real-life interest groups and helplines run by trained counsellors exist to help young mothers in such situations.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Dec 14, 2008.