Sarah Palin Daughter Bristol Palin Graduates From Highschool

Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol Palin just graduated from highschool. The unwed mother gave birth to her baby before she received her highschool diploma and is the spokesperson for teens to practice abstinence. Are we missing something? Doesn't the abstinence talk come before the baby and pregnancy arrives?

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Looking like a lot of her classmates – giddy and irreverent, wearing a silly necklace of Blow-Pop lollipops strung together with curly gift ribbon – Bristol Palin stepped toward the stage in Wasilla Sports Complex Thursday night to receive her high school diploma, more a worried mom than a jubilant teen.

"Where's my baby?" Bristol mouthed, searching the two front rows where her family sat until she finally spotted son Tripp near the backstage door, where Bristol's Aunt Heather was feeding the infant a bottle. With a wave to the little one she alternately calls "Handsome" and "My Guy," Bristol crossed the stage – and crossed "graduate high school" off her to-do list.

"I knew it would be hard work, but I knew I was going to do it," Bristol, 18, tells PEOPLE.

Her mom, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, was not always so sure. Palin said in an interview that one of her first thoughts when Bristol announced her surprise pregnancy last spring was, "Oh, there goes her education." "And that's why I'm so proud of her … really relieved," Palin says. "It's been a challenging and exciting year – her senior year – and I'm just so pleased that we are where we are today." [PEOPLE]