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 went to the hospital emergency room after a serious infection started to spread up her legs. Without a job or home, separated from loved ones, she resided in a small structure she had constructed in a friend’s yard. She was also hooked on fentanyl.
As doctors treated her infection, she grew increasingly fearful. The onset of withdrawal began. She bent over the bedside and became sick.
Stephanie eventually collapsed. “I have to get out of here. I have to go home and get high.”
She had used fentanyl before arriving at the hospital and had sufficient opportunity to get treated before she needed to go home to relapse. 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 am leaving,” Stephanie said.
But the hospital refused to discharge her: the leg infection was critical, but medical staff detected she also had an amniotic fluid leak. The nurse, her nurse, warned her: if she left, she and her baby would face grave danger.
Izzie persuaded the doctor to give Stephanie controlled doses of fentanyl periodically, knowing that symptoms could threaten her and the baby. After delivery Stephanie would be switched to methadone, a drug that alleviates cravings and is commonly used in addiction recovery.
After five days, on 12 November 2022, Stephanie delivered a infant weighing just over four pounds – born before term, small but alive.
When the caregiver questioned if she wanted to cuddle her newborn, Stephanie said “no.” She was numb. Her epidural had failed, her previous intake of fentanyl had been administered a few hours prior to birth.
She felt unwell. Ill-equipped for parenting. Unworthy.
Stephanie had attempted sobriety several times during pregnancy, and felt terrible each time she was unsuccessful. She felt without value, criticizing herself for not being able to do the impossible. An doctor told her to “simply” stop using. Even her source would not provide to her when she became obviously with child.
“Yet I was unable,” she said. “I required assistance.”
The widespread belief that her bond with her newborn would make her stop using only led to deeper self-loathing and self-harm, a cause for her to use again. Yet she could not easily command her addiction away, any more than she could eliminate a chronic disease.
The baby was taken to the special care nursery. When Stephanie eventually visited her, she was hooked up to monitors, so small she thought she would harm her. Embracing her at last, she felt nothing. “I looked at her and was like, ‘What is our future?’” She continued to doubt she wanted to be her mother.
After two days she decided to give her child the name Izzie, after the nurse who had been so kind to her.
Nurses and doctors told her about Maddie’s Place, a innovative treatment home where parents and infants affected by substance use are treated together, not apart.
In many parts of America, where a baby is identified with newborn addiction symptoms frequently, infants are still quickly moved to hospitals and given drugs while their mothers face custody evaluations. But a developing system of centers like the care home is showing an important truth: when mothers and babies stay together, recovery succeeds, custody cases decrease and future expenses reduce.
It took Stephanie a while to gather the courage to call, but she ultimately reached out. After ensuring she qualified for the program, care providers came to bring her to the facility.
She departed the institution still in withdrawal, anxious and doubtful about what would come next.
At the facility, Stephanie still was concerned that child services would come take Izzie – even though she was uncertain about motherhood. The anxiety remained: that at any moment, someone could enter and take her baby away.
For the beginning period, Stephanie remained isolated. “I didn’t really want anything to do with any of them,” she said. “I lacked confidence at that point.”
Homelessness, she said, was about survival. Substances came first; faith came last.
Stephanie had a trusted ally, but even that relationship was delicate. The individuals she cared for always found ways to cause pain. She did not know how to care for herself, not to mention anyone else.
Daily, staff from the center drove her to a treatment center, administered in pill form. Slowly, she was embracing sobriety.
She spent every minute outside treatment with Izzie, and could see that her baby was getting the specialized care she needed. Her infant faced feeding challenges at first, with intolerance to some formulas and obvious stomach troubles. She needed dietary support. She also had sensory challenges and required an occupational therapist – all common issues for babies exposed to substances.
When a child recognizes these infants need affection, then I could do this. I could be a mom.
On a day prior to the holiday, Stephanie sat in the visitation area, where individuals struggling with substance use can come for guided meetings with their babies. A support specialist, a recovery coach, stopped by with her own five kids in tow to drop off cookies. They all gathered around Stephanie, who was seated on the ground holding Izzie.
The children were wide-eyed in wonder of the tiny infant in Stephanie’s arms. “They were innocent,” Stephanie said. “They overlooked my addiction. They focused only on the baby.”
She holds a picture of the moment. She is wearing dark trousers and a sweatshirt, a gray knit hat with a pompom on her head, resting on the floor with the exit nearby. She is lean. Her posture is humble so you do not see her expression. She is presenting her daughter on her knee for the young ones to see and they are crowding near, fawning and reaching out to the baby.
A young boy, eight, asked the parents: “What about the fathers?” The women attempted to clarify that the men were occupied, engaged elsewhere, that they would be there given the chance.
“In the future,” Jacob said, “I plan to be a great parent. I will teach them about love.”
Stephanie and her companion made eye contact. “I just lost it and fell apart,” 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 drug-exposed newborns have been available for years.
The Finnegan NAS scale was established in 1975|
