A Step Up : Drugs: A Long Beach home run by the county helps female addicts who are pregnant or raising children put their shattered lives back together.

Amber Kim Perry knew she’d hit bottom one day two months ago when she cut her hand on a cocaine pipe while attempting to get high.

Five months pregnant, homeless and a drug addict, she waited five days before seeking medical help. When she finally dragged herself to a hospital, said Perry, 25, the infection was so bad that the doctors had to operate.

Cynthia Lane, another cocaine user, finally realized that she needed help one recent morning when she woke up alone in a park surrounded by six empty beer cans, the contents of which she had consumed the night before. “I was four months pregnant, tired, hungry, confused and angry,” Lane, 33, said.

And Cynthia Hall got the jolt of her life in October when she unexpectedly went into labor at a friend’s house and delivered a baby girl while under the influence of cocaine. After finding traces of the drug in the infant, county child protection officials ordered that the baby be taken away from her and kept by a relative. “I want her back,” Hall, 32, said. “I’ll stay here as long as it takes.”

All three women eventually became residents of Baby Step Inn, a home for female drug addicts who are either pregnant or raising children. A tidy pink house in West Long Beach with 12 beds for stays of up to a year, Baby Step Inn is a major component of a new statewide pilot program aimed at reducing the incidence of babies born with drug-related problems.

National and county statistics indicate that the number of such babies is rising. According to the federal government, as many as 11% of the babies born in the United States are exposed to alcohol or illicit drugs before they are born.

When ingested by pregnant women, doctors say, such substances can enter a fetus’ body through the mother’s bloodstream. In Los Angeles County, in fact, one survey found 915 reported cases of neonatal drug or alcohol exposure in 1986. By 1988, the last year for which statistics are available, the number had more than tripled to about 3,000.

The effects can be devastating, according to Dr. Margaret Yonekura, chief of obstetrics at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. One of the biggest risks, she said, is the danger of miscarriage or birth defects including malformations of the bladder, kidneys or genitals. Some drug-affected babies are even born without fingers due to poor blood circulation, the doctor said.

Pregnant women who take drugs can also cause their babies to have strokes in the uterus, Yonekura said. Drug-exposed babies frequently are born prematurely and require long hospital stays. And as a result of high blood pressure caused by drugs, the placenta sometimes separates from the mother’s womb too early, resulting in death for the fetus and blood loss for the mother.

Even infants who survive often experience withdrawal symptoms as their bodies try to shake off the effects of drugs, Yonekura said. Such symptoms can include the jitters, eating difficulties, trembling or lethargy. Sometimes drug-exposed babies become hyperactive, causing frustrations for their parents that occasionally end in child abuse. And often the cycle continues with abused children eventually becoming abusing (or drug-abusing) parents, she said.

Earlier this year, the state responded by setting up pilot programs at several locations to explore various approaches to the problem. Alameda, Sacramento and San Diego counties were among those that received funding. Los Angeles County, for its part, began pilot programs in South-Central Los Angeles and in the South Bay and Southeast-Long Beach area.

One of the major components of the Los Angeles County effort is Baby Step Inn, according to Lynne Appel, executive director of the Southeast Council on Alcoholism and Drug Problems, which is coordinating the effort. A similar home recently opened in South-Central Los Angeles, Appel said.

According to Yonekura, physicians at Harbor-UCLA referring women to the Long Beach facility insist on some basic guidelines: that they be drug addicts, that they be pregnant or have recently delivered babies, or that they have children who were exposed to drugs before the age of 3.

While project administrators prefer that each Baby Step Inn resident pay a monthly fee of $350, Appel said, no one is ever turned away because she can’t pay. In addition to the income from the residents, Appel said, the facility is being run on a $150,000 grant from the state.

Those who live there have access to a variety of services. For starters, they undergo intensive individual and group therapy based on a 12-step plan developed for alcohol and drug abusers by Alcoholics Anonymous. Their unborn babies or young children receive close scrutiny and treatment when necessary during frequent visits with Harbor-UCLA physicians. And each woman is assigned a professional case manager responsible for charting her progress from the day she arrives until she is able to live independently or with a mate, stay off drugs and support herself and her offspring.

But the most important thing that Baby Step Inn does, Yonekura said, is provide a stable drug-free environment in which the women can feel at home, have their babies and begin to deal with their problems.

“A lot of these women have never had any tender loving care,” the doctor said. “They’ve learned helplessness (because) they’ve never been able to control their environments to nurture them in any way; they have lived in chaos with no emotional support. We provide a nice, warm, homelike environment.”

Many seem to have responded positively to life in the neatly decorated 1920s-style house, with its pink lampshades, flowered wallpaper and cleanly tiled bathrooms.

“It’s beautiful here,” Hall said. “It’s done a lot for me. I feel more self-esteem. I’ve learned to open up and express myself in front of people.”

In time, she said, she hopes to become healthy and stable enough to stay off drugs indefinitely and persuade authorities that she is worthy of regaining custody of her child, which was taken from her.

“People here really care for you,” Hall said. “It’s a great program.”

Lane said in a recent interview that she felt much better about herself than she did the morning she woke up in the park.

And Perry says that while her cut hand has healed, the psychic scars that led to the injury are still on the mend. “I had a lot of rage inside of me,” she said, referring to her recent past. “I no longer cared for nothing or nobody.”

As a gauge of her personal progress, Perry recalls a recent walk in the neighborhood with some other residents, when she saw a drug transaction taking place on the sidewalk.

“I used to get butterflies in my stomach when I saw that,” she said, recalling the days when she craved cocaine. “This time it didn’t bother me and that felt real good.”