She Was Pregnant and Addicted to Fentanyl: How Keeping Her Baby Rescued Both Lives.
Pregnant and experiencing intense discomfort, a woman named Stephanie arrived at the medical facility after her infection worsened up her legs. Jobless and without shelter, cut off from her relatives, she stayed in a makeshift shelter she had constructed in a companion's property. She was also dependent on fentanyl.
As medical staff managed her infection, she started to feel anxious. Withdrawal was setting in. She bent over the bedside and became sick.
Stephanie ultimately gave in. “I need to leave. I have to go home and take a hit.”
She had taken the drug before seeking medical help and had only a brief window to get treated before she needed to go home to relapse. She thought she still had four weeks left to figure out how to get clean and have this baby.
The attending nurse disagreed. She told Stephanie she was staying put.
“I am leaving,” Stephanie said.
But the hospital refused to discharge her: the infection in her legs was critical, but medical staff detected she also had an amniotic fluid leak. The nurse, a caregiver named Izzie, warned her: if she departed, she and her baby would face grave danger.
The nurse convinced the doctor to give Stephanie measured quantities of fentanyl periodically, knowing that withdrawal could endanger her and the baby. After delivery Stephanie would be transitioned to methadone, a treatment that reduces symptoms and is often prescribed in rehabilitation.
Five days later, on 12 November 2022, Stephanie gave birth to a infant weighing a small weight – early, tiny yet healthy.
When the caregiver questioned if she wanted to embrace her child, Stephanie said “not now.” She was emotionless. Her pain relief did not work, her last dose of fentanyl had been provided four hours before delivery.
She felt sick. Unprepared to be a mother. Undeserving.
Stephanie had tried to get clean repeatedly before birth, and felt awful each time she failed. She felt worthless, berating herself for not being able to achieve the unattainable. An OBGYN told her to “just” stop using. Even her supplier refused to sell to her when she became visibly pregnant.
“But I couldn’t,” she said. “I required assistance.”
The pervasive expectation that her affection for her child would make her quit only led to deeper self-loathing and self-abuse, a cause for her to relapse. Yet she could not easily command her addiction away, any more than she could eliminate a chronic disease.
The baby was taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. When Stephanie eventually visited her, she was hooked up to tubes and leads, so small she thought she would hurt her. Embracing her at last, she felt detached. “I just stared at her and was like, ‘How will I care for you?’” She continued to doubt she wanted to be her mother.
Two days later she decided to give her child the name the same as her nurse, after the nurse who had been so kind to her.
Nurses and doctors told her about a specialized facility, a innovative treatment home where mothers and their drug-exposed newborns are cared for jointly, not apart.
In many parts of America, where a baby is found to have newborn addiction symptoms every 18 minutes, infants are still whisked to NICUs and treated with pharmaceuticals while their mothers face child-protection investigations. But a small, growing network of centers like Maddie’s Place is showing an important truth: when mothers and babies stay together, outcomes improve, custody cases decrease and future expenses reduce.
It took Stephanie a while to gather the courage to call, but she eventually made the call. After verifying her eligibility for the program, two staff members came to pick her up.
She departed the institution still in recovery, fearful and unsure about what would happen next.
At Maddie’s Place, Stephanie still worried that child services would come seize her child – even though she was uncertain about motherhood. The anxiety remained: that at any moment, someone could arrive and separate them.
For the beginning period, Stephanie kept to herself. “I didn’t really want anything to do with any of them,” she said. “I was suspicious at that point.”
Life on the streets, she said, was about survival. Substances came first; trust came last.
Stephanie had one close friend, but even that connection was tenuous. The those close to her always found ways to let her down. She lacked the ability to love herself, not to mention anyone else.
Each day, staff from Maddie’s Place transported her to a recovery program, provided orally. Slowly, she was starting to get clean.
She utilized each moment outside treatment with Izzie, and could see that her baby was obtaining necessary support she needed. Her daughter struggled with eating at first, with sensitivity to certain foods and obvious stomach troubles. She needed dietary support. She also had heightened sensory issues and required an professional – all common issues for babies exposed to substances.
If this little kid could see that these babies deserve to be loved, then I found the strength. I would become a mother.
One afternoon before Thanksgiving, Stephanie remained in the shared space, where parents in active addiction can come for guided meetings with their babies. An advocate, a peer support specialist, visited with her own five kids in tow to bring treats. They all crowded near Stephanie, who was seated on the ground holding Izzie.
The children were wide-eyed in awe of the tiny infant in Stephanie’s arms. “They showed no judgment,” Stephanie said. “My past did not matter to them. None of those things mattered to them.”
She holds a picture of the moment. She is dressed in dark trousers and a sweatshirt, a beanie with a pompom on her head, sitting on the wooden floor with the entryway at her back. She is slender. Her face is downcast so you do not see her expression. She is holding Izzie up on her knee for the other kids to see and they are gathered around, showing interest to the baby.
One child, eight, asked the mothers: “Where are all the dads?” The women attempted to clarify that the fathers had obligations, called away to other tasks, that they would be there if they could.
“In the future,” Jacob said, “I plan to be a great parent. I’m gonna show them that they deserve to be loved.”
Stephanie and her companion looked at each other. “I broke down,” Stephanie said. “Seeing that even youth understand that newborns require care, then I could do this. I could be a mom.”
Tools for treating drug-exposed newborns have been used for a long time.
The assessment tool was created in 1975|
