Balancing Act

Jesenia Estrella plans to celebrate Mother's Day by staying home with her 9-month-old daughter, Jazmine, and studying for her math proficiency exam.

She is 17 years old.

"Pass me that soap," she tells Martez Kelley, Jazmine's 19-year-old father, as they draw a tiny bath in the living room of the three-bedroom southwest Las Vegas house Jesenia shares with her mom and 15-year-old sister.

"She loves when I give her a bath."

The teen birthrate in the United States is up for the first time in 15 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 2005 and 2006 (the last year for which statistics are available), the birthrate for girls age 15 to 19 rose 3 percent, from 40.5 births per 1,000 to 41.9.

This comes after steady declines from the most recent peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.

"In my opinion, it's because parents are spending less time with their teenagers," said Toni Mims, founder of It's Your Life, a Las Vegas teen-mom mentoring and housing-assistance program. "They let them do what they want to do. And if they're not in school and getting sex education, they're out there getting pregnant."

The CDC has not released state data for 2006. But in 2005, Nevada's teen birthrate was 50.1 per 1,000, significantly above the national average. This made us the ninth leading teen-birth state. (Nevada's figures have been pacing the nation's. We also were the ninth leading teen-birth state in 1991, and our teen birthrate also dropped between 1991 and 2005.)

"Losing your childhood is probably the hardest thing," Jesenia says of being a young mother. "A lot of my friends stopped talking to me after I got pregnant because their parents said they couldn't."

Jesenia does not feel like she did anything wrong, however; she says she practiced safe sex.

"I got pregnant because I got pneumonia," she says. "When you take antibiotics, it cancels out your birth control." (According to mayoclinic.com, some antibiotics "could hypothetically impair the effectiveness of birth control pills." While no large studies have proved this point, the Web site adds, "researchers can't rule out that a small percentage of women may experience decreased effectiveness of birth control pills while taking an antibiotic.")

Jesenia says she made an appointment for an abortion when she was six months pregnant. But then she felt Jazmine move.

"Like, really move," she recalls. "And I saw my stomach move. I just couldn't do it."

Jesenia and Martez no longer date, but he's still around. Every Tuesday, according to Jesenia, Jazmine sleeps over at his one-bedroom apartment. And on most other days, Martez pops by en route to South Point, where he works for $10.75 an hour as a steward. Often, he arrives with diapers or food.

"I was shocked when I found out she was pregnant," Martez says, "but I was supporting her no matter what she wanted to do.

"I knew I had to man up."

Jesenia's mother also has stepped up, offering to take Jazmine until Jesenia finishes college and finds a job.

"We can do it, but I have chosen not to," says Jesenia, who plans to join the Army after she graduates from Burk High School this spring.

So Jesenia spends most of her days juggling baby care with school.

"In the mornings, when I'm getting ready for school, I'll hand her to my mom," Jesenia says. "And then when my mom's getting ready for work, I'll hold her." (Jesenia brings Jazmine with her to Burk, which provides day care for its students for $2 per week.)

Brittany Jackson is another 17-year-old Las Vegan trying to juggle baby care with school. But her support comes from nonprofit charities, not family members.

"My mom doesn't talk to me," Brittany says. "She wanted me to have an abortion with Elijah, but I didn't do it because it was scheduled for Valentine's Day.

"That's a day of love, and I guess I loved him."

Elijah is now a year old. Brittany says his father is a 40-year-old truck driver she met while walking home from the movies with her friends. He pulled up to the sidewalk in his car and they started chatting.

"I don't know," Brittany says. "I guess I never really received love from anyone growing up."

Brittany never spoke to her own father until looking him up in a phone directory last year.

"He bought my school clothes before I got pregnant with Elijah," she says. "He was proud of me then, because I guess I was the only one of his kids to stay in school that long.

"But he's not proud of me anymore."

Brittany says that even her grandparents -- who raised her when Brittany's mother lost custody following an arrest when Brittany was 5 -- refuse to hear from, or support, her.

"In my family, when you have children early, it's looked down upon," Brittany says. "They shut their door and didn't care that I had no place to stay."

By January, Brittany had dropped out of high school and she and Elijah, then 8 months old, found themselves at rock bottom: living at Shade Tree shelter.

"We were staying on bunk beds, eating at only certain times, showering with everybody else at certain times," she says. "I was very depressed."

In February, Mims -- for whom Brittany worked in a day care center -- founded a group home and made Brittany its first tenant. For $500 a month rent, she and three other teenage moms get their own 100-square-foot bedroom and bathroom in a North Las Vegas townhouse.

"Teens are afraid to come tell people their story," Mims said, "because certain people have a tendency to turn their back and go, 'You were just hot and you didn't want to listen to your mama and that's why you're in this situation.'

"A lot of teens don't ask for help, and that's why we find a lot of babies dead or dropped off somewhere."

Brittany is attending school again, which Mims requires of all her residents. Every weekday afternoon, when Brittany boards a bus bound for Desert Rose Adult High School, one of her roommates baby-sits. (A schedule hangs in the corner of the dining room.)

"Getting an education is the only way to break the cycle of poverty," Mims said. (By age 8, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a child of a high school dropout is 10 times more likely to live in poverty.)

Unfortunately, Brittany's story gets worse before it gets better. At Shade Tree, she found out she was pregnant again -- with twins. Isaiah and Jermiah are now 1 month old. Britanny said she got back together with Elijah's father because "he promised me we were gonna be a family."

"But I guess he didn't really mean it," she says, adding that they always used a condom after Elijah's birth, and one happened to break. (According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, nearly one-quarter of teen mothers give birth a second time before turning 20.)

The father of Brittany's three children provides no financial support and never has.

"That's the problem with a lot of these fathers," Mims said. "They can make a baby, but they can't take care of them."

Brittany's sole income is $443 a month in welfare and $298 a month in food stamps, in addition to assistance from the Courtney Children's Foundation. And she's one of the lucky ones. Were it not for Mims, she probably would still reside at Shade Tree.

"And she would have lost all three children to Child Protective Services," Mims said. "An average person would think she's incapable of taking care of her kids if she doesn't have a place to stay.

"But she's a good mom."

Brittany says she has hope for the future. She wants to become a pediatrician, which means at least eight more years of school and five additional years of residency.

"If I can get it paid for, I'm going to do it," she says. "I've always said that I wanted to be a doctor."

Last month, Brittany received some positive news. She passed her high school proficiency test -- on time even though she missed a year of school, and even though she took the exam four days after giving birth to the twins.

So Brittany will graduate high school in June, just like Jesenia Estrella. That makes them both off to a better start than half of all teen mothers who never finish high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

"I want the best for my children because I didn't grow up with anything," Brittany says. "And I'm gonna make that happen."

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.