Woman Pleads Guilty to Leaving Newborn Baby Under Tree (VIDEO)

Twenty-one year old St. Louis County, Mo. woman Kaitlin Norton has pleaded guilty to child endangerment after leaving her newborn baby under a tree after giving birth to the child in secret in February 2011, the Daily Mail reported.

KSDK.com reported last January that Ellisville, Mo. police responded to a call from a neighbor after the woman living near where the baby had been dropped off discovered the baby wrapped in a blanket, having initially thought it was a litter of newborn puppies. Betty Crowder is the woman who found the bundle, and was shocked when policemen unwrapped it to reveal a newborn inside.

"We said, 'Oh, my God, it's a baby,'" Ms. Crowder said to the St Louis Post Dispatch.

The baby boy was then transported the hospital, and despite being displaced, appeared uninjured. The baby was then placed in state care, and at the time it was unclear if the father would seek custody of the boy. 

Several days later Norton was arrested and also treated at the hospital, then turned herself into the police following her release. In an indicment by the Grand Jury, she was accused of first-degree child abandonment and child endangerment.

Norton had given birth to the baby in her boyfriend's basement alone and, according to her lawyers, wasn't sure how to handle her deep, long-held secret of being pregnant, as neither the child's father nor the family knew about the pregnancy. Her lawyers said that in a panic she left the child wrapped in a blanket under a pine tree down the block. 

Norton's lawyer, Andy Leonard, said Norton's body type and clothing choices allowed her to hide her pregnancy from family and friends, though the "why" is a different question, according to STLToday.com. 

"I don't begin to know why," Leonard said. "She couldn't face the problem up through the moment that she delivered the child. She didn't know what to do." He offered the explanation that Norton had concealed her pregnancy due to a combination of naive understanding of her body, "a boyfriend who was away at college and insecurity over the relationships in her life," though said that the biggest factor was probably fear.

Leonard called it a "bad decision" on the part of Norton, who asked for forgiveness. "She couldn't face the problem up through the moment that she delivered the child, alone, in a basement laundry room," he said. "She is particularly sorry that she didn't ask for help from the families involved." At the time she also received counseling while cooperating with the authorities and awaiting her trial.

Yesterday Norton pleaded guilty to a felony charge of child endangerment at St Louis County Circuit Court. Under the 2002 Safe Place For Newborns Act in Missouri, a woman unable to cope can hand over a baby under a year old to any medical professional, firehouse or police department, according to Seth Bundy, a spokesman for the state's department of social services.  Every state in the U.S. offers similar services to mothers unwilling or unable to care for their babies as a way to protect vulnerable children. Since 2005, 31 parents have taken advantage of the law.

Melissa Jonson-Reid, a professor at Washington University's George Warren Brown School of Social Work, said that "common reasons for abandoning children include feeling unprepared for parenting and lacking knowledge of how or where to safely drop off unwanted children," as reported by STLToday.com.

"What strikes me with this case is that she took some care not to do damage," Jonson-Reid, who specializes in abuse and neglect, told STL Today. "She didn't put the baby in a garbage can. It appears she put the baby in a place where he was not likely to be harmed." 

Elaine Roper, a social worker at Barnes-Jewish Hospital's teen pregnancy center, told STLToday: "It's important for us in the community to not speculate or to blame because you never know where someone's coming from or what life has handed them."

Norton will be sentenced in July. The status of the baby is unavailable. 

Click here to watch KSDK.com's news coverage on Kaitlin Norton from January 2012.