Single, pregnant and panicked

The evening began in Chicago at Bin 36, the wine bar that had become Kortney Peagram’s favorite retreat from her merciless workdays. There, over red wine and plates of hummus and pita, she met up with a college buddy in town on business. A portfolio manager at a consulting firm, Peagram, 28, crammed her schedule, leading management-training sessions, teaching at a local university and in her spare time prepping for a marathon. In quiet moments, her mind drifted to an upcoming European ski trip.

Peagram had just gone through a bitter breakup. On that winter night more than a year ago, unloading on an old friend felt good. A few glasses into the evening, her friend confessed that he worried his recent wedding had been a mistake. “I told him it was first-year-marriage syndrome,” Peagram says. She offered him some armchair psychoanalysis, and talk turned back to old times. “What did I do?” he asked. “Why didn’t we date? I just realized you are the one girl I always had fun with.”

Peagram blushed. To break up the awkwardness, she ordered another round. Before she knew it, they were kissing. “He went from friend to lover over intoxication,” she says. “I made a stupid judgment call.”

She opened her eyes at daybreak to sheets so radioactively white they could only be hotel linens. “My mind started racing,” she recalls. “I’m not on the Pill. We hadn’t used a condom. What am I going to do?” She had stopped using birth control pills after her last relationship. She wasn’t having sex; plus, she liked not having to remember to take them.

She stared at her friend’s naked back; he was still lightly snoring. “I had to figure out what I was going to do before he woke up,” she says. She was mortified at having slept with a married man and decided the two should never speak of it.

Despite her panic, it was three days before Peagram could get to the pharmacy for the “morning after” pill, which is most effective when taken within 72 hours. A couple of weeks later, while visiting the doctor for a previously scheduled Pap smear, she had the clinic run a pregnancy test, and it came out negative. But before long, she missed a couple of periods and some days woke to bone-splitting fatigue. Still, the symptoms were easy to rationalize for a sworn vegan training for a marathon. She regressed into weeks of thinking like a teenager, telling herself there was no way the test could have been wrong; she couldn’t possibly be pregnant from one night of desperation sex. Not until she left on her vacation in the Swiss Alps nearly three months later, when little could interfere with the signals coming from her body, did the truth begin to crystallize in her mind.

“On my vacation, I missed my third period,” she says. “In my heart, I knew I was pregnant.” That wasn’t her only problem. One of her sisters, who was collecting Peagram’s mail while she was away, phoned Switzerland; a letter had arrived telling Peagram she had lost her job at the consulting firm.

The day she returned to Chicago, Peagram took a home pregnancy test. She was crying even before she went into the bathroom. She saw the lines: positive. Definitely pregnant. “I believed if I stared at the stick long enough and kept crying, the result would change,” she recalls. She frantically drove from drugstore to drugstore, buying three more tests from three different locations, too embarrassed to hand more than one box at a time to the cashier. Each test gave the same answer.

She crawled into bed, pulled her favorite quilt over her head and thought painfully of her sister Kim in Florida. As irony would have it, Kim had been trying for years to have a baby, and the stress of infertility had taken a toll on her marriage. Divorced and 42, her time seemed to have expired. Yet here was her little sister, pregnant, jobless and eager to find a way out. “For once in my life,” Peagram says, “I felt like a failure.”

Unplanned pregnancies among women in their 20s
This isn’t supposed to happen to smart women. We want to believe that unwed mothers are teenagers who have been careless or clueless. The reality, recently reported by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington, D.C., is that the majority of unplanned pregnancies and abortions occur among women in their 20s. After little variation during the 1990s, single women in their 20s are also giving birth at higher rates. And contrary to stereotypes, high-income, educated women are by no means immune: Four in 10 of the 1.1 million annual unplanned pregnancies to single twentysomethings occur to women with at least some college education.

In part, demographics are at work: Young women are less likely to walk down the aisle than women a generation ago but just as likely to be sexually experienced. These days, single women in their 20s often live with their partner, and cohabiting women are especially prone to unplanned pregnancy. Women in their 20s also experience distressingly high rates of sexual violence, which can lead to unwanted pregnancy when sex is coerced or women are bullied into not using birth control. And it’s possible birth rates are up in part because more unmarried women are deciding to keep their babies — 54 percent, up from 41 percent in 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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Still, no one can say exactly why, in an era of plentiful information and less stigma about using birth control, young American women keep getting pregnant when they say they don’t want to. Public health experts find it difficult to discuss the issue without appearing to condemn single moms and unmarried couples — many of whom, of course, go on to live happy, fulfilling lives, married or not. “It’s confusing to talk about it,” says Shanti Kulkarni, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of social work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “It’s easier to coalesce around this idea that it’s not good for teenagers to get pregnant. It’s not as clear what pregnancy means for the life of a woman in her 20s.”

For some women, surprise motherhood ends up being the blessing of a lifetime. Others choose abortion with no regrets. But the high rate of unintended pregnancy remains distressing, Kulkarni says, because “it suggests that women are not as in control of their sexuality and childbearing as we would hope.”

This month, SELF and the National Campaign are partnering to release a report examining what’s behind all of these surprise pregnancies among single women in their 20s. The organization commissioned a survey asking 2,282 unmarried men and women ages 18 to 29 to share views on contraception, sex and relationships. Then SELF sat in on focus groups as young adults talked about sex and contraception in candid detail.

For starters, we found that single women are much less savvy about birth control than they think. Nearly half of survey respondents said they don’t seek out information on preventing pregnancy because they know enough already. Yet when the National Campaign tested the same group on their knowledge, women scored 6 out of 11 on average and men a dismal 4.7. Why no urgent need to be informed? Researchers found that women are often passive or ambivalent about getting pregnant, with more than one in four saying, “If it happens, it happens” or “It would be no big deal.” Says Sarah Brown, chief executive officer of the National Campaign, “We have a large number of single young adults who say they are not actively seeking pregnancy, but their actions don’t match their words. They’re not really trying, but they’re not really not trying.”

A Hollywood ending unlikely
Hollywood would have us believe a surprise pregnancy is practically romantic. “Knocked Up” — in which two incompatible strangers find love around a pregnant belly — echoes a scenario that actresses are playing out in their personal lives and the pages of gossip magazines. A beaming Nicole Richie and her boyfriend tote daughter Harlow around Los Angeles, and the one-time party girl even started designing maternity clothes. Jessica Alba and boyfriend Cash Warren tied the knot five months after announcing her pregnancy in 2007.

Such happiness is not the most likely script among the not-so-famous. Earlier data from the National Campaign shows that although having a baby after an unintended pregnancy can lead to a happy marriage, it’s more likely that relationships become strained. Nine months after an unplanned birth, 29 percent of women report frequent conflict with the father. And among couples living together when they accidentally got pregnant, two thirds are not married by the child’s second birthday. Nearly a quarter of the couples have split up — twice as many breakups as among married couples with unplanned pregnancies.

These facts are often contrary to expectation. The National Campaign study found that many single women, when they allow themselves to be completely honest, aren’t thinking pregnancy would be the end of the world. “Even though my boyfriend says he doesn’t want kids, I know he does,” says Holly, 21, who took part in the National Campaign focus groups. In fact, the organization’s research has found that nearly one in four pregnancies is considered intentional by the woman but not by the man.

“This idea of intended or unintended — it’s a distinction that doesn’t apply to many women,” says Lawrence Finer, Ph.D., director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual-health research group in New York City. “They see pregnancy as something that occurs or doesn’t occur, not something consciously chosen.” His team asked women with unplanned pregnancies, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy were you to be pregnant?” “You tend to see a heaping at 1, 5 and 10,” Finer says. Some women are thrilled, some are horrified, but about a fifth are a mixture of both.

“Many women want children at some point, so they aren’t quite willing to say every single day that they don’t want to get pregnant,” Brown says. Yet this is the level of motivation necessary to take a daily pill or use contraception in every moment of passion. This laissez-faire attitude doesn’t apply only to pregnancy, notes Sari Locker, Ph.D., a sexuality educator who teaches psychology at Columbia University in New York City. “Twentysomethings often do not know what is going to happen next in their life, period,” Locker says. Today’s young women tend to feel adrift, she says; they are more likely than previous generations to bounce from job to job, move in and out of their parents’ homes and make things up as they go along. “Twentysomethings who have not yet found meaning in their life may wonder if having a baby would give them meaning,” Locker says. “So they take the risk.” And magical thinking that a pregnancy might lead to a marriage proposal makes the stakes feel lower than they truly are.

“I was 1,000 percent surprised,” Brandy Edwards, 28, says of her boyfriend’s reaction to her pregnancy 17 months ago. She believed that a baby, if one came, wouldn’t do anything to harm their relationship. “I thought I really knew him,” she says.

Recently divorced, Edwards was enrolled in cosmetology school in South Carolina at the time. Her boyfriend was in Detroit, her hometown, but they saw each other as often as they could. At first, the couple were diligent about birth control and were responsible enough to both be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. But they grew more cavalier as time passed, and she stopped taking the Pill during the months they spent apart. “I felt like if it happened, it happened,” she says. “This wasn’t a man I didn’t love.”

One night, Edwards had a strange dream that she had twin boys. She couldn’t stop thinking about it and soon took a pregnancy test. When she called to tell her boyfriend the test was positive, he was upset. They began arguing, both on the phone and across text exchanges. “I trusted you,” he messaged her. She resented the implication of his words.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she replied.

“I’m sure you knew when you were ovulating,” he texted.

After weeks of back-and-forth, he called Edwards and finally got to the point: He wanted her to have an abortion. “I’ll come down there and hold your hand,” he offered. But Edwards didn’t want that: She had hoped to have children one day, and even though her relationship was ending, she knew that her family and friends would help support her and the baby.

Today, Edwards lives in her aunt’s house in Dearborn, Michigan, and cares for her now 9-month-old daughter with the aid of her aunt and the baby’s father, who helps out several times a week. Even if she could go back and do everything over again, she insists, she would still have gotten pregnant. “But I definitely would have done it in a better relationship,” Edwards adds.

Economic consequences
For an adult woman, the costs of moving forward with an unplanned pregnancy may not be as definable as with a teenager forced to drop out of high school or enter the rolls of public assistance. Still, research suggests these women do face hurdles to health and happiness. “Unplanned pregnancies are at higher risk for complications, both for the woman and the fetus or newborn,” says Katharine O’Connell, M.D., an ob/gyn at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. “Missing the opportunity for pre-conception and early prenatal care could expose the fetus to cigarettes, alcohol, X-rays and dangerous medications.” These exposures increase the risk for low birth weight and cognitive and physical defects.

Numerous studies link unplanned births with economic hardship and interrupted education. A 2003 study in Social Problems found that women who were single when they had their first child are between 2 and 2.7 times more likely to live in poverty, even after controlling for race, family background, age, education and employment status. Women with unplanned babies also report becoming severely depressed one third more often than women with families they planned. “It’s not that the children are automatically unloved,” Brown says. “It’s that the environment they’re born into has more stresses.”

“I was so lost,” says Kate Stuhl, who got pregnant at 25. “Everything was just taken out from under me.” A native of Philadelphia, Stuhl moved to New York City in June 2003 to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Three days after signing the lease on her apartment, she discovered she was pregnant by the boyfriend she had left for good back home. “I just didn’t see a future for us,” she says.

Now they were having a baby. How could this be? A few weeks earlier, she had forgotten to take her pills for a couple of days. She did what she always had — took the pills she missed and assumed (erroneously) she was covered.

Stuhl, who grew up in a devout Catholic family, kept the baby. She gave up her apartment but stayed in school, so unwilling was she to let go of her New York dream. It meant driving two hours from her parents’ home every Monday, crashing at a friend’s place for the school week and driving back to Philadelphia after her last class. She took her finals when she was nine months pregnant.

When the baby arrived, the commute and classes became overwhelming. “I became that girl who never finished school and had to move back in with her parents,” she says. For the first two years of her daughter’s life, Stuhl sees now, the energy it took to fight off depression and regret kept her from fully engaging as a mother. She and her ex tried reconciling but eventually split, although he remains very involved with their daughter, Olivia. “I love my daughter and would never trade her for anything,” she says. “But there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t say, ‘What if?’”

Better informed about contraception
To be consistent about contraception — to be unflinchingly devoted to it — you have to know as much about your birth control as any other detail in your life. Only 1 in 20 accidental pregnancies is due to failure of properly used contraceptives, according to Guttmacher research; most couples either misuse or don’t use their birth control. “If women are going to be involved in intimate relationships, they need to make sure they’re educated,” says Carol M. Lewis, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Social Work Research at the University of Texas at Austin.

But the National Campaign survey reveals disturbing gaps in pregnancy-prevention knowledge. More than half of young adults say they know little or nothing about the Depo-Provera shot, the ring, diaphragms, IUDs and natural family planning. Twenty-three percent of women falsely believe that taking birth control pills raises the risk for all cancers. Nearly one in four respondents says the topic of birth control is too embarrassing to talk about, and another 21 percent say finding the right source of information is too difficult.

The survey reveals only 17 percent of men have consulted with their M.D. about the best form of birth control for them and their partner. Half of women have done so — not a stellar showing, either. “They feel if they don’t know, they should know, so they’re embarrassed,” Brown says. “But even if somebody had fantastically complete sex education in 10th grade, now they’re 25 or 35. They don’t have that information at their fingertips, and some of it has changed.”

Coping with an unintended pregnancy
In Chicago, Kortney Peagram wasn’t going to allow one wrong turn to ruin her life. With four pregnancy tests in the trash, she called the baby’s father and spoke the words aloud for the first time: “I’m pregnant.” He told her he would stand by any choice she made.

By then 12 weeks pregnant, she scheduled an abortion but delayed the procedure two weeks so she could run the marathon she had trained for. The idea weighed on her; she kept thinking of her sister, who had tried 18 years for a baby and even lost thousands of dollars as a victim of adoption fraud. Still, she says, “it was the only thing that made sense. I financially couldn’t support a child.” With no job, she couldn’t even afford to buy health insurance.

The night before her abortion, as Peagram sat in a friend’s living room consoling herself with California rolls and wine, her cell phone rang. Peagram stepped onto the porch and took the call. It was Kim. “I never expected to ask you this, but I want to make sure you know I would adopt this baby,” she said. Peagram knew this is why she had been avoiding her sister. “I thought she might ask, but I didn’t think I was strong enough to go through with it,” she says. Kim suggested that Peagram spend the rest of her pregnancy in Orlando, where she would cover the medical costs. “I love you, Kortney,” she said, and they hung up.

Peagram clutched the phone and stared into the darkness. For the first time since that night at the wine bar, her life had a sudden clarity. She rested a hand on her belly and whispered, “I hope you’re OK.” And at 3 a.m., she picked up her BlackBerry and typed, “I just had my last glass of wine for the next six months and I made a decision. I’m in if you’re in.”

Jack Edward Peagram arrived on September 21, weighing 7 pounds 4 ounces and sporting a full head of hair. He was delivered straight into Kim’s arms. “I didn’t hold him,” Peagram says. “I’ve never loved anyone like I love Jack, but I’m not his mom.” When he is older, Peagram says, “we’re going to tell him the truth. We’re going to tell him I carried him and that he was chosen.”

Peagram is back home in Chicago now, with a new job and her old life. The baby’s father, now divorced, had wanted a relationship. But he waived legal claim to his son, never wanting so much as a photo. “That got too hard for me,” Peagram says. “There was so much baggage between us.”

Watching her sister — “I can’t even explain the heaven she’s in,” Peagram says — has given her a new awe for single moms. “They develop a strong sense of survival and independence that makes you admire them and praise them for all that they do,” she says. Peagram also has a new understanding of the bottomless love a child can bring and wants to experience it one day with her own family. For now, though, she’s back on the Pill and takes it daily, without fail. “I want kids,” she says. “Next time, I will be prepared.”