College-Bound Teen-Age Mom Defies Odds : Pacoima: With her family’s support, she will graduate with her class.

First she was asked to leave her magnet courses. Next, she noticed old friends stopped calling or inviting her to parties. Then came the gossip, which gnawed at the former honor student and led her to withdraw even further from seemingly carefree peers.

No one could have convinced Lydia Nolasco at age 15 that keeping her baby was only the first in a series of choices with long-reverberating results. But as her body swelled with life, so did her realization that little in her teen-age world would remain the same.

Today, at 17, the San Fernando High School student has made countless sacrifices with the maturity of a woman twice her age. She recently skipped her senior prom to save money. That decision was made willingly--driven by what was best for her child, Danny, who was born two years ago this month.

“I just want to keep going until I am finished with college and am able to find a good job,” she said while she sat on the double bed she shares with her son in her mother’s Pacoima home. “It is worth it if I can do that.”

On June 20, Lydia will attain one of her many goals when she receives her high school diploma with the rest of her class. She next plans to attend Valley College in Van Nuys.

As one of an estimated 5,000 teen-age mothers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, she never once collected welfare, and returned to school three months after giving birth, maintaining passing, if not stellar, grades.

She confirmed her suspicions of pregnancy with a clandestine visit to the high school health clinic.

“I was happy when I found out I was pregnant,” Lydia said. “I was excited to have my own little baby.”

Lydia’s immediate reaction to impending parenthood was that it would be an exciting, even fun, experience. When she broke the news to her boyfriend, David Lopez, that same day, they literally jumped with joy. All afternoon, they talked--and dreamed--about the baby they had created together.

Lydia’s first real hurdle came when she told her parents. She waited until her second trimester, when the tightness of her clothes made it difficult to conceal her pregnancy. Though always sure of her parents’ unconditional love and support, she knew the news would break their hearts.

As the youngest of five children and the only daughter in a working-class family, Lydia had always been a protected and cherished child steeped in her parents’ Mexican heritage and Baptist beliefs. Her father and mother--a machinist and a flea market merchant--had hoped life would offer her many opportunities, especially since she enjoyed school and received good grades.

Now her future was in jeopardy.

But after the initial anger and obligatory lectures, Lydia’s parents assured her that she and her baby would be accepted into the tightknit family and could live there while she finished school. Although her parents are divorced, she is close to both of them, who offered financial and emotional backing.

“My family was really supportive,” Lydia said. “I don’t know where I would be or what I would be doing if they hadn’t helped me.”

Her pregnancy was not received without some emotional toll, which Lydia witnessed late one night during her sixth month.

“I woke up and heard voices in the living room, and when I peeked out the [bedroom] door, I saw my mom telling my oldest brother, Jose, about the baby and he was crying, really crying,” she said. Her mother had also had her first baby as a teen-ager.

Lydia returned to school at the beginning of her junior year in the fall. She soon discovered that continuing her education would be tougher than she had thought.

As a magnet student during her sophomore year, Lydia had been enrolled in classes with tough academic standards. Teachers were attentive, and good books and lab equipment were available.

As a pregnant junior, though, her absences piled up with frequent medical appointments and bouts of morning sickness. She was called into a counselor’s office to explain.

“The counselor asked me if it was a medical problem, and I said, ‘Yes . . . I’m pregnant.’ Then she said that I shouldn’t have enrolled in the class if I knew I was pregnant and that I should leave the program.”

School officials say they never forced Lydia out of magnet courses, but because of her absences and an anticipated maternity leave, they recommended that she enter a high school for pregnant students.

Lydia was angry but never considered quitting school. “My parents always said education comes first because they never had a chance to finish.”

Unsure of her rights and feeling helpless, Lydia followed her counselor’s advice and enrolled in McAlister High School, a continuation school for pregnant teen-agers, a block from San Fernando High.

The workload was different from what Lydia was accustomed to. The less-demanding assignments were not handed out by instructors but instead were made available to students in workbooks, which could be completed by students on their own time. Teachers weren’t as readily available, and Lydia felt she had little encouragement to do well.

“It wasn’t good for me because all I did was sit around, eat and talk to the other pregnant girls,” Lydia said.

Her pregnancy and change of school caused her to lose contact with old friends.

“They said I was so stupid to have a child,” Lydia said. “We just weren’t the same anymore because they didn’t have a kid.”

Her mother, a few aunts and cousins quietly celebrated at an intimate baby shower.

The baby, Danny, was born at Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills after 15 hours of painful labor, with Lopez coaching at Lydia’s side. The two had attended weeks of Lamaze classes together at Holy Cross.

“David was nervous,” Lydia said. “He was trying to help me, but I was in a bad mood and would just push him away. But he would always come back and say, ‘It’s OK; don’t worry.’ ”

When the doctor asked Lopez to cut the umbilical cord, he backed away with his hands up until a nurse persuaded him to make the traditional cut.

“We laugh about it now, but it was scary at time,” Lydia said.

Lydia returned to San Fernando High School when Danny turned 3 months old. She started in regular courses while her mother baby-sat. But soon her absences again accumulated when the baby got sick or Lydia didn’t get enough sleep, and her mother’s need to earn a living made full-time baby-sitting impossible.

Lydia was also reluctant to depend too heavily on her family for child care because she believed Danny was her primary responsibility--especially when he was sick and wanted his mother more than anyone else.

“It was my fault that I got pregnant, and I would have to take care of him,” she said.

As soon as a slot opened up at the high school’s child-care center, she enrolled Danny. The center enabled her to catch up with her studies and keep her attendance high in class because it was always open, accepted children with runny noses and was right across the street from San Fernando High.

Most days start at 6 a.m. for Lydia. She washes herself and her son, and they wear the clothes she has laid out the night before. She runs a comb through Danny’s hair, then, with the tot in a stroller, they rush out the door with some bread or fruit for breakfast--eaten on the two-mile walk to school.

“Most of the times I walk out of here with my hair unbrushed, or I’ll forget the diapers or extra clothes,” she admits. “But we get to school on time.”

Now every lunch period, Lydia can be found at the day-care center with Danny, greeting him with hugs and kisses before settling down to feed him or grab something to eat herself. Lopez, 19, shows up to round out their family gatherings.

After her classes end at 3 p.m., she swings by the center to pick up Danny before the walk home. She plays with or watches television with the boy before she helps her mother prepare dinner for the family. If she has a lot of homework, Lopez comes over and plays with Danny while she studies in her room. Lopez gives him his bath and puts him to bed.

“If David has more homework, we will just switch, and I will give the bath,” Lydia said.

Danny is usually fast asleep by 8 p.m., and if she has completed her homework, Lydia will begin the cycle again, laying out clothes for the next day, before she goes to bed at 10.

Although his grades are not as good as Lydia’s, Lopez also hopes to graduate this year from San Fernando High. While most of his free time is spent working part time with his father at an auto body repair shop, he spends as much time as he can with Lydia and Danny at her mother’s house, sometimes sleeping on the living-room couch.

“I always want to stay in Danny’s life, and I want Lydia to have a career,” Lopez said. “I hope we get married one day when we are done with school.”

Returning to her old campus required more than catching up with lessons. Old friends didn’t know how to treat her after her five-month absence. New alliances had been made, and she was not part of them.

Adding to her feeling of being out of place were the whispers she heard as she walked down the halls.

“They would say, ‘She won’t amount to anything’ or ‘She’ll just be a housewife,’ ” Lydia said. “But I know that isn’t true.”

As prom time approached in May, Lydia looked forward to going with Lopez and feeling like a teen-ager again.

But when her mother and father looked over their finances and found less than was needed for her prom ticket, a dress, and her expenses for college next fall, Lydia offered to forgo the once-in-a-lifetime dance. She decided it was better to save for a used car so she wouldn’t have to depend on a bus to get her and Danny to college.

“My mom said, ‘Are you sure you won’t regret this?’ and I said ‘No, I don’t need to go,’ ” Lydia said. “But it was so hard at school. Everybody was talking about what they were going to wear and who they were going with. I just tried to ignore it.

“I know I will have to give up things for Danny,” she continued. “Every mother has to do that.”

Lydia is also aware that she isn’t typical in a county where teen-agers, 554 of them younger than 15, accounted for 23,970 live births in 1992.

She has no plans to marry for now and clings to her dreams of a career in child development. She is determined to avoid the fate of too many young unmarried mothers “who think they can’t do anything about their lives.”

“They just accept that they have to depend on other people or stay on welfare,” Lydia said. “They give up on their dreams, and if they graduate, they just want a job, not a career.”

Lydia’s parents will pitch in for her college tuition, and Lydia hopes the grants she has applied for will cover the price of books and fees. She plans on dividing her days next fall between a part-time teacher’s aide job at an elementary school, her own education and raising Danny.

The college’s child-care center will offer her day care at a discounted rate. Lopez plans to take auto mechanic classes at a nearby occupational center.

Though armed with her high school diploma and the unwavering support of her family, Lydia knows the future is tinged with ambiguity and there is no guarantee of success. As she stands on the brink of adulthood, she already understands what it may take years for her classmates to learn: that parenthood is not the end of the world, just the beginning of a more complicated one.

“I have the attitude that I can, I will, I am going to succeed,” Lydia said. “Hopefully.”