A Pregnant Woman's Battle with Fentanyl Addiction: How Keeping Her Baby Transformed Their Futures.
In her eighth month of pregnancy and suffering, the expectant mother went to the medical facility after her infection worsened up her legs. Without a job or home, estranged from her family, she lived in a shed she had assembled in a acquaintance's garden. She was also addicted to fentanyl.
As physicians addressed her infection, she grew increasingly fearful. Symptoms of withdrawal emerged. She leaned over the bed and threw up.
Stephanie finally broke down. “Listen, I gotta go. I have to go home and use drugs.”
She had used fentanyl before arriving at the hospital and had only a brief window to get treated before she needed to go home to use once more. She thought she still had several weeks to find a way to become sober and deliver her child.
The attending nurse disagreed. She told Stephanie she was staying put.
“I am leaving,” Stephanie said.
But the hospital refused to discharge her: the condition in her limbs was serious, but physicians found she also had an ruptured membrane. The nurse, a caregiver named Izzie, warned her: if she left, she and her baby would not survive.
She encouraged the doctor to give Stephanie measured quantities of fentanyl at regular intervals, knowing that symptoms could threaten her and the baby. After delivery Stephanie would be switched to methadone, a treatment that reduces symptoms and is frequently utilized in rehabilitation.
A short time later, on 12 November 2022, Stephanie gave birth to a daughter weighing just over four pounds – premature, tiny yet healthy.
When the attendant inquired if she wanted to cuddle her newborn, Stephanie said “not now.” She was emotionless. Her anesthesia was ineffective, her final administration of fentanyl had been provided a few hours prior to birth.
She felt unwell. Ill-equipped for parenting. Undeserving.
Stephanie had attempted sobriety several times during pregnancy, and felt horrible each time she was unsuccessful. She felt without value, blaming herself for not being able to do the impossible. An doctor told her to “just” stop using. Even her supplier refused to sell to her when she became clearly expecting.
“But I couldn’t,” she said. “I required assistance.”
The widespread belief that her love for her baby would make her quit only led to greater shame and self-harm, a trigger for her to use again. Yet she could not simply will her addiction away, any more than she could overcome a persistent condition.
The infant was moved to the special care nursery. When Stephanie eventually visited her, she was hooked up to monitors, so small she thought she would break her. Cradling her initially, she felt nothing. “I looked at her and was like, ‘What am I going to do with you?’” She continued to doubt she wanted to be her mother.
Following a brief period she decided to call her daughter after her caregiver, after the attendant who showed compassion to her.
Nurses and doctors told her about Maddie’s Place, a new kind of care center where parents and infants affected by substance use are supported as a unit, not apart.
In many parts of America, where a baby is diagnosed with newborn addiction symptoms regularly, infants are still rushed to special care and given drugs while their mothers face child-protection investigations. But a limited but expanding group of centers like the care home is demonstrating a key fact: when families are kept intact, recovery succeeds, foster placements fall and long-term costs decline.
It took Stephanie a while to gather the courage to call, but she ultimately reached out. After ensuring she qualified for the program, a couple of employees came to pick her up.
She departed the institution still in withdrawal, anxious and doubtful about what would happen next.
At the facility, Stephanie still feared that CPS would come take Izzie – even though she was uncertain about motherhood. The anxiety remained: that at any time, someone could enter and separate them.
For the first two weeks, Stephanie kept to herself. “I avoided interaction,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of trust at that point.”
Homelessness, she said, was about survival. Drugs came first; faith came last.
Stephanie had a single companion, but even that relationship was delicate. The people she loved always found ways to let her down. She did not know how to care for herself, let alone anyone else.
Every day, staff from Maddie’s Place took her to a recovery program, provided orally. Over time, she was embracing sobriety.
She utilized each moment beyond therapy with Izzie, and could see that her baby was getting the specialized care she needed. Her girl had some trouble feeding at first, with intolerance to some formulas and obvious stomach troubles. She needed nutritional guidance. She also had heightened sensory issues and required an specialist – all common issues for babies affected by withdrawal.
If this little kid could see that these babies deserve to be loved, then I was capable. I could parent.
One afternoon before Thanksgiving, Stephanie was in the common room, where those still using can come for guided meetings with their babies. A support specialist, a recovery coach, stopped by with her own family in tow to bring treats. They all gathered around Stephanie, who was resting on the carpet holding Izzie.
The children were wide-eyed in awe of the small baby in Stephanie’s arms. “They were innocent,” Stephanie said. “My past did not matter to them. None of those things mattered to them.”
She keeps a photo of the moment. She is dressed in black pants and a hoodie, a beanie with a bobble on her head, sitting on the wooden floor with the door behind her. She is lean. Her face is downcast so you do not see her expression. She is lifting the baby on her leg for the other kids to see and they are standing close, admiring and touching to the baby.
One child, eight, asked the moms: “Where are all the dads?” The parents responded that the dads were busy, engaged elsewhere, that they would be there given the chance.
“In the future,” Jacob said, “I will excel as a father. I’m gonna show them that they deserve to be loved.”
Stephanie and Bunch-Smith looked at each other. “I broke down,” Stephanie said. “When a child recognized that these babies deserve to be loved, then I was able. I would become a mother.”
Approaches for managing babies with exposure have existed for decades.
The evaluation method was developed in 1975|
