A Pregnant Woman's Battle with Fentanyl Addiction: How Keeping Her Baby Rescued Both Lives.
Eight months pregnant and in severe pain, the expectant mother visited the hospital emergency room after her infection worsened up her legs. Unemployed and homeless, cut off from her relatives, she stayed in a makeshift shelter she had constructed in a friend’s yard. She was also addicted to fentanyl.
As doctors treated her infection, she began to panic. The onset of withdrawal began. She leaned over the bed and vomited.
Stephanie eventually collapsed. “I need to leave. I have to go home and take a hit.”
She had consumed opioids before seeking medical help and had sufficient opportunity to get treated before she was compelled to leave to get high again. She thought she still had a month remaining to figure out how to get clean and give birth.
The nurse had other ideas. She told Stephanie she was not going anywhere.
“I will go,” Stephanie said.
But the doctors would not let her go: the leg infection was severe, but physicians found she also had an leakage of amniotic fluid. The nurse, a caregiver named Izzie, warned her: if she departed, she and her baby would be at risk of death.
Izzie persuaded the doctor to give Stephanie regulated amounts of fentanyl at regular intervals, knowing that abstinence might harm her and the baby. Post-birth Stephanie would be switched to methadone, a medication that eases withdrawal and is often prescribed in rehabilitation.
A short time later, on a day in November 2022, Stephanie delivered a infant weighing a small weight – early, small but alive.
When the attendant inquired if she wanted to cuddle her newborn, Stephanie said “I cannot.” She was numb. Her epidural had failed, her last dose of fentanyl had been given four hours before delivery.
She felt ill. Ill-equipped for parenting. Not fit.
Stephanie had attempted sobriety multiple times while expecting, and felt terrible each time she relapsed. She felt without value, blaming herself for not being able to do the impossible. An doctor told her to “only” stop using. Even her dealer refused to sell to her when she became visibly pregnant.
“Yet I was unable,” she said. “I had to seek support.”
The widespread belief that her love for her baby would make her recover only led to greater shame and negative self-talk, a cause for her to return to drugs. Yet she could not easily command her addiction away, any more than she could eliminate a long-term illness.
The newborn was transferred to the special care nursery. When Stephanie at last met her, she was connected to tubes and leads, so little she thought she would harm her. Embracing her at last, she felt detached. “I just stared at her and was like, ‘What am I going to do with you?’” She still wasn’t sure she wanted to be her mother.
After two days she decided to call her daughter after her caregiver, after the attendant who showed compassion to her.
Medical personnel told her about a specialized facility, a innovative treatment home where parents and infants affected by substance use are supported as a unit, not apart.
In many parts of America, where a baby is found to have newborn addiction symptoms frequently, infants are still quickly moved to hospitals and treated with pharmaceuticals while their mothers face custody evaluations. But a limited but expanding group of centers like this facility is demonstrating a key fact: when parents and infants remain united, results get better, foster placements fall and future expenses reduce.
It took Stephanie some time to build confidence to call, but she ultimately reached out. After ensuring she qualified for the program, care providers came to collect her.
She stepped out of the hospital still in withdrawal, scared and uncertain about what would happen next.
At the facility, Stephanie still was concerned that CPS would come take Izzie – even though she was uncertain about motherhood. The concern persisted: that at any point, someone could walk in and separate them.
For the initial fortnight, Stephanie kept to herself. “I preferred to be alone,” she said. “I was suspicious at that point.”
Life on the streets, she said, was about enduring. Substances came first; trust came last.
Stephanie had a single companion, but even that relationship was delicate. The individuals she cared for always found ways to let her down. She did not know how to care for herself, let alone anyone else.
Daily, staff from the facility took her to a treatment center, administered in pill form. Gradually, she was embracing sobriety.
She spent every minute when not in sessions with Izzie, and could see that her baby was receiving appropriate attention she needed. Her infant faced feeding challenges at first, with adverse reactions to milk and obvious stomach troubles. She needed feeding therapy. She also had heightened sensory issues and required an specialist – all typical problems for babies exposed to substances.
When a child recognizes these infants need affection, then I could do this. I could be a mom.
One afternoon before Thanksgiving, Stephanie sat in the visitation area, where individuals struggling with substance use can come for supervised visits with their babies. A support specialist, a peer support specialist, stopped by with her own children in tow to bring treats. They all assembled beside Stephanie, who was seated on the ground holding Izzie.
The kids looked amazed in admiration of the little newborn in Stephanie’s arms. “They showed no judgment,” Stephanie said. “They didn’t care that I had used drugs with her. Such issues were irrelevant.”
She has an image of the moment. She is wearing black pants and a hoodie, a gray knit hat with a pompom on her head, sitting on the wooden floor with the entryway at her back. She is slender. Her head is tilted forward so you miss her features. She is holding Izzie up on her lap for the children to see and they are gathered around, admiring and touching to the baby.
One child, eight, asked the moms: “What about the fathers?” The parents responded that the dads were busy, called away to other tasks, that they would be there if they could.
“In the future,” Jacob said, “I will excel as a father. I will teach them about love.”
Stephanie and the specialist exchanged glances. “I became emotional,” Stephanie said. “When a child recognized that newborns require care, then I found the courage. I could parent.”
Approaches for managing babies with exposure have been available for years.
The assessment tool was developed in 1975|
