Pregnant, Single and Together : Awaiting Babies’ Birth and Adoption, They Live at Same Complex

It’s almost like summer camp, but one they never dreamed of attending. They stay up late playing cards, lie out by the pool and write letters to their boyfriends. And once a week, they take a walk to their obstetrician.

Susan and Laura, two young women from out of state, are sharing a critical time in their lives because of a twist of fate--they each contacted the same lawyer who has placed them in the same Woodland Hills apartment complex. Susan and Laura, not their real names, are giving up their babies for adoption.

At the Oakwood Apartments in Woodland Hills, there are usually two to six pregnant women planning to give their babies to adoptive parents through the office of Santa Monica adoption attorney Karen R. Lane. Placing pregnant women in the same complex while they await the birth and adoption of their babies is fairly new and, according to the San Fernando Valley Bar Assn., unique in the valley.

“It’s an idea that is catching on because it works like a fairy tale,” Lane said. “It’s something good for everyone involved because the young women have each other, and the adoptive parents get to be close to them and learn something about the birth mothers of these children.”

Their living expenses are paid by adoptive parents and arranged by Lane, who is helping several valley couples through the process of privately adopting the babies.

Joan G. Flam, an adoption attorney in Encino, also uses Oakwood to house out-of-town birth mothers, but she has never had more than one stay there at a time.

“It sounds like a good idea,” Flam said, “but I imagine there could be some problems with the birth mothers comparing adoptive families.”

Flam said that rather than encouraging the relationship between birth mothers, she would prefer emphasizing the relationship between birth mothers and adoptive couples.

The adoptive parents pay $5,000 to $17,000 for the pregnant mother’s living expenses, including the flight to Los Angeles, medical fees and miscellaneous expenses while she is here. (The higher costs result from medical complications, such as Cesarean sections.)

Laura was 20 years old and eight months pregnant when she decided to travel across the country from her small Ohio hometown to Woodland Hills, where she would sit out the final weeks of her pregnancy, then give her baby up for adoption.

“I figured it would be the loneliest time of my life,” she said. “Nobody but my boyfriend knows I am pregnant, but I knew adoption was the best thing. By coming out here, nobody would find out.”

Susan, 19, had similar thoughts when she left her Michigan hometown.

“I knew nobody and had never been here before,” Susan said. “I thought I’d be sitting in some small apartment all by myself and bored to tears.”

Instead, they became close friends and part of a group of pregnant young women from the Midwest and East at Oakwood awaiting the births of their babies sometime around Mother’s Day.

“This way the girls have someone to talk to, someone to compare their experience with and someone to be their friend during this time,” Lane said.

One adoptive couple from Sherman Oaks discovered another benefit in having the birth mother of their child living with other pregnant women planning to give their babies up for adoption.

“Sometimes one of the girls would get depressed about giving their baby up for adoption, and then having the support of the others made all the difference in the world,” the adoptive mother said. “If these girls were left all alone in an apartment watching their pregnancies progress, a lot of them would probably change their minds. In this kind of setup, they can help each other to be level-headed and remember the reasons they chose adoption in the first place.”

Laura and Susan agree.

“It’s not like this isn’t hard,” Susan said. “But sometimes when it seems one of us is thinking about things too much, one of the other girls will cheer her up and remind her that in only a few weeks she’ll be thin again and able to see her feet when she weighs herself. We need that from each other at this time.”

Since arriving at the apartments, Laura, Susan and the other women, all in their late teens or early 20s, have been inseparable.

Valeda Boyd, a customer service representative at Oakwood, said she has rented studio or one-bedroom apartments through Lane’s office to at least 10 pregnant women this year. At a cost that starts at $1,100 per month, the women are provided with a furnished apartment that includes dishes, linens, a television set and stereo, Boyd said.

So far, no other residents have commented on the unusually high number of young pregnant women living at the complex, Boyd said.

“There are a lot of young families living in these apartments, so they can pretty much go about their business without anyone raising an eyebrow,” Boyd said.

Laura and Susan said they think some of the residents have noticed their presence.

“Sometimes we’re all out at the pool together--three blondes who look too young to be having babies--and we’ll notice people looking at us,” Susan said. “Some of them must know something different is happening.”

By spending their time with other young women in their same situation, Laura and Susan said their short time in Woodland Hills has been more like a summer camp experience. When one of them gets a sharp pain in her side, another will reassure her that it was just the baby kicking. When Susan noticed her ankles swelling, Laura was able to reassure her that hers too were easily twice what they had been 18 months ago, when she might have been the prettiest--and thinnest--girl at her high school prom.

“We’re getting great medical care, but we don’t really have a lot of information about what’s happening to our bodies,” Laura said. “So we use each other to make sure everything’s going along like it should.”

The women Lane represents almost always see obstetricians in West Hills and give birth at Humana Hospital there because many of the adoptive couples live in the west valley. Because they will not be keeping their babies, Laura, Susan and the others do not sit at home poring over literature about their unborn children like other mothers-to-be.

“It’s the strangest thing to feel so close to someone you only met a few weeks ago,” Laura said of Susan, adding that the two plan to write to each other after they have their babies. “But here we are, from two places hundreds of miles away from each other, and suddenly we have our whole lives in common.”

Because their backgrounds are similar, the women spend many hours talking about their home life and the boyfriends awaiting their return.

Laura was born and raised in a small town in Ohio where her grandfather has been mayor as long as she can remember. When she got pregnant, she and her boyfriend researched the idea of having an abortion but they decided it wasn’t something they could do. Laura was four months pregnant when she saw a newspaper ad that read:

“Couple in Southern California unable to have children. Seeking baby to love and care for and raise as their own. Confidential. Expenses paid for.”

Later that day, Laura dialed the number at the bottom of the ad and was put in touch with attorney Lane. Lane arranged for the adoptive parents who had placed the ad to talk with Laura. In a matter of days, Laura agreed to the adoption.

“It was something I was willing to do because I could come to California and be completely anonymous,” Laura said. “My parents still don’t know I’m pregnant. They think I’m here looking for work and trying to get accepted at UCLA.”

Immediately, Lane introduced Laura to Susan, along with two other pregnant women she represents, at the complex. Since then, one of the women has had a baby girl adopted by the Sherman Oaks couple.

Susan’s story is similar to Laura’s.

She and her 22-year-old boyfriend were living together when she got pregnant. Her boyfriend wanted to get married and have the child, but Susan didn’t see it the same way.

“I had just graduated from high school, and I knew I wanted to wait several years before settling into marriage and having children,” Susan said. “I am against the idea of an abortion, so adoption was really the only answer.”

Then, when Susan was five months pregnant, she saw an ad similar to the one Laura saw. She made the phone call and spent the next three hours talking to the woman who placed the ad. She agreed to the adoption during the conversation.

It is common for couples seeking a private adoption to place newspaper ads in other states. Usually, pregnant women who respond to those ads are looking for a private and confidential situation, Lane said.

Unlike Laura, Susan’s parents know about her pregnancy and decision to give up the baby.

“But my parents put a lot of pressure on me to keep the baby,” Susan said. “That’s another reason why it was so nice to have the other girls here to talk to for support. They understood why I wanted to give the baby up because they’re all going through the same things, the same feelings.”

The three pregnant women at Oakwood have agreed to sever communication with the adoptive parents of their babies. Instead, during a rare conversation about feelings and emotions, they decided among themselves that they would each like one picture of their babies in the weeks after they are born.

“It’s wonderful that they can be their own support group at a time like this,” said the Sherman Oaks adoptive mother, whose adopted daughter is almost 2 months old. “They worked out the idea of the picture during one of their talks. It’s a courageous thing to understand at such a young age why continual communication wouldn’t be a good idea.”

She said the birth mother of her baby bought the child one outfit before its birth.

“She wanted the baby to wear the outfit in the picture I sent,” the adoptive mother said. “I just sent it off the other day.”