Highs and lows. Amber Portwood’s fraught relationship with daughter Leah has been documented on Teen Mom OGOver the years.
In 2008, the Indiana native gave birth with her then-boyfriend to a baby girl. Gary Shirley. The couple divorced three years later and the police officer wed.Kristina AndersonIn 2015 in Michigan. They share a daughter Emilee.
Portwood is the final word.Never too lateAuthor is also the mother to son James Andrew Glennon. Since Portwood’s July 2019 domestic violence arrest and subsequent divorce, the exes have been coparenting their baby son together. The California native shares primary physical custody with Portwood, while Portwood has joint legal custody.
The 16 and PregnantExclusively told by alum Us Weekly in March 2020 that she saw James “fairly a lot,” saying, “I am trying to coparent the best way that I can. I get a lot from people telling me.[ing] me after my days with him: ‘I can tell that you saw James today because you just have that smile on your face.’ When I hear that, I’m like, ‘Yeah. It’s just the truth.’ Just something in my heart told me, ‘Amber, you’re going to be back with your son one day. And it doesn’t matter if it’s one day a week, two days a week, three days a week, four days a week. It was hard work in the beginning … I just kept trying to focus on myself and my son and my family and I got him back as much as I can right now.”
While Portwood felt “great” about her relationship with her youngest child at the time, she and Leah struggled more.
“I feel like I’m never going to win,” the Forever Haute creator said during a September 2021 episode of the MTV show, explaining that the preteen was “acting weird” and had “turned” on her. “I wanted us to have a great coparenting family that I thought we had until it became weird.”
Portwood added at the time: “This is not [Leah]. She doesn’t ignore me like that. Even if I take responsibility for every single wrongdoing I’ve ever done, it just feels like it’s never enough.”
Keep scrolling to see the MTV personality’s evolving relationship with Leah over the years, from a birthday celebration in November 2019 to an “awkward” visit in October 2021.
