Pregnant, addicted
Every 25 minutes a baby suffering from opiod withdrawal is born in the U.S., creating a surge in treatment.
BOSTON — As soon as the home pregnancy test strip turned blue, Susan Bellone headed straight for Boston Medical Center’s emergency room. She’d been using heroin and knew she needed medical help to protect her baby.
“I felt so guilty. I still do,” Bellone said. At 32, six years into her heroin addiction, having a baby was the last thing on her mind.
“I was not in the right place to start a family,” she said. “But once it was happening, it was happening, so I couldn’t turn back.”
Nationwide, the number of pregnant women using heroin, prescription opioids or medications used to treat opioid addiction has increased more than five times and it’s expected to keep rising. The number of babies born with severe opioid withdrawal symptoms also has spiraled, leaving hospitals scrambling to find better ways to care for the burgeoning population of mothers and newborns.
Among the most important principles is that expectant mothers who are addicts should not try to quit drugs cold turkey because doing so could cause a miscarriage. Trying to quit opioids without the help of medications also presents a high risk of relapse and fatal overdose.
Until the opioid-abuse epidemic took hold about eight years ago, most hospitals saw only one or two cases a year of neonatal abstinence syndrome. Now, a baby is born suffering from opioid withdrawal every 25 minutes in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
When Bellone rushed to the emergency room six years ago, she didn’t know she’d gone to one of the best places in the country to receive addiction treatment during pregnancy.
At Boston Medical Center in the city’s South End, a specialized team of obstetricians, addiction medicine providers and counselors known as Project Respect has been treating pregnant drug users for more than 30 years.
Now, dozens of hospitals and health clinics are gearing up to provide the same kind of specialized treatment for a rapidly rising number of pregnant drug users and their newborns.
Although painful, newborn withdrawal symptoms, which include muscle cramps, tremors, diarrhea, vomiting, sleep problems and sometimes seizures, are not lifethreatening and have not been shown to cause health problems or developmental deficiencies later in life. The condition can be treated with small doses of morphine and subsides within three weeks.
Last year, a federal law — the Protecting Our Infants Act — was enacted authorizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to work with states to collect data on the prevalence of babies born with opioids in their bloodstream. It also calls on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop recommendations for the best way to prevent and treat drug use during pregnancy.