Grossberg cries as she enters the courthouse

WILMINGTON, Delaware (CNN) -- Former sweethearts Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson received suspended sentences with prison terms on Thursday for killing their newborn son, delivered in secret in a Delaware motel room and dumped in a trash bin. Grossberg was ordered to spend 2 1/2 years in prison, while Peterson must spend two years.

Both Peterson, 20, and Grossberg, who turns 20 on Friday, had faced sentences of up to 10 years after each pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier in the year.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Henry Ridgely said he was giving Peterson a lighter sentence because of his cooperation with prosecutors. Peterson was calm throughout the sentencing hearing.

Grossberg, who was sentenced first, received an eight-year term with all but 2 1/2 years suspended.

Peterson was sentenced to eight years for his role, with all but two years suspended.

The former college freshmen -- who had separate legal defenses -- were sentenced separately.

Grossberg will get credit for two months she served in prison when she was first arrested. She'll also perform 300 hours of community service and pay a $5,000 fine, plus court costs.

Additional information about Peterson's sentence was not immediately available.

The defendants, who have no previous criminal record, have been under house arrest since a few months after being charged.

Courtroom comments

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Before her sentencing, a tearful Grossberg told the court, "I am extremely sorry for what happened to my baby. This will be with me for the rest of my life."

Prosecutors asked that she be sent to prison saying, "We are proxies for a little boy who is dead, who lived the majority of his life in a trash bag."

Prosecutors read a letter from Grossberg to Peterson in which she said, "I don't know how this could happen. Why us? I wish I could have my nice body back. All I want is for it to go away. I can't get caught. I'm sorry we haven't really been able to get it on."

Judge Ridgely said Grossberg was from an exemplary family but her "lack of understanding the consequences of a pregnancy is disturbing." He said Grossberg "wrote to God but you should have talked to your parents."

She said "I love you" to her family in the courtroom as she was taken away crying by court personnel.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after the sentencing, defense attorney Robert Tanenbaum said Grossberg knew so little about pregnancy she did not know what was happening to her. "She thought she was five months pregnant," he said. He said Grossberg did not kill her baby as a deliberate act.

Tanenbaum said Grossberg should have sought prenatal care but that she made a mistake.

Plea bargain

Peterson arrived at the courthouse separately Thursday

As the former college students from a well-to-do New Jersey suburb faced a trial for first-degree murder last spring, Peterson made a plea bargain deal with prosecutors.

He agreed to testify against Grossberg in exchange for a guilty plea to a reduced charge of manslaughter. That pressured Grossberg into making her own admission of manslaughter.

Sentencing guidelines in Delaware recommend a judge set a term of 2 1/2 years if there are no unusual circumstances, but judges are not obligated to follow the guideline.

In the last three years, 22 Delaware defendants have been sentenced for manslaughter, according to The (Wilmington) News Journal. The average sentence has been six years, while the shortest sentence was six months, the newspaper said on its Web site.

If Grossberg and Peterson had been convicted on murder charges, they could have faced the death penalty.

They were originally charged with first-degree murder after delivering their baby in secret in November 1996, then killing him and dumping his body in an outdoor dumpster next to the Newark, Delaware, motel.

The baby was found in the trash bin after Grossberg was hospitalized with seizures and doctors determined she had given birth.

Grossberg, who turns 20 on Friday, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April, and could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sentencing guidelines suggested 2 1/2 years.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Henry duPont Ridgely was expected to begin a sentencing hearing for her boyfriend, Brian Peterson, 20, immediately after Grossberg's sentencing.

Hidden pregnancy

The infant's body was found in this dumpster in November 1996

According to prosecutors, Grossberg got pregnant while she and Peterson were still in high school and living with their parents in Bergen County, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

The couple chose to hide the pregnancy. Amy wore baggy clothes and the two set off for college, she to an arts program at the University of Delaware and he to study business at Gettysburg College, 70 miles away in Pennsylvania.

At one point, according to Peterson's lawyers, the two talked about abortion and even drove to an abortion clinic in North Jersey but did not go in.

Months later, they checked into a motel near her campus, where she gave birth. Defense lawyers said they believed the child was born dead. Peterson's attorneys said he threw the baby away after she instructed him to "get rid of it."

However, state forensic experts have a different account of how the infant's short life came to an end.

"The baby died of skull fractures and brain injuries due to blunt-force head trauma and shaking. We classified it as a homicide," Delaware Medical Examiner Richard Callery said.

Pregnancy seems unreal

Former sweethearts Grossberg and Peterson

Child abuse experts point out that middle-class adolescents in similar cases do not think of a pregnancy as real until it is too late. Abortion is either too expensive or fraught with moral peril. Then, when the baby comes, panic erupts.

"They've basically become frantic about what will happen when the child's discovered and they come up with all sorts of catastrophic ideas. It's a crisis, and it seems as though the end of all things as we know them is about to happen," said Dr. Lawrence Wissow, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University.

Among youth from wealthy suburbs, unwanted pregnancy also ranks as a threat to an otherwise assured economic future. "The future for them, and the baby, suddenly looks incredibly grim," Wissow said.

Correspondent Gary Tuchman, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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