Having a hard time

Adrianna - posted on 11/26/2010 ( 1 mom has responded )

I just delivered a beautiful baby girl on November 22nd. She was born on methadone and is now in the special care nursery withdrawing. I'm having such a hard time dealing with this. I obviously knew throughout my pregnancy that she was going to have to withdraw but I guess i thought it would be easier to deal with. I feel so guilty that she needs to suffer due to my decisions. Also some of the nurses at the hospital i can tell are disgusted and don't treat me that well. Alot of them are awesome but you can tell the ones the are judging. Anyway, I was wondering if some moms could share their experience with their babies and how they coped. Also, I was wondering if moms could tell me how long their babies were in the hospital, the medicines they recieved, and how bad their babies withdrawal was. Thank you, hopefully I can hear some good info.

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Emily - posted on 11/29/2010

Hi Adrianna,

I had the same experience with my daughter last year. My doctor induced my labor a week early, which is a common thing for him. I decided not to dose that morning so the withdrawal process would happen a little faster. They told me to wait to breastfeed until she went into withdrawal so they could see if it was going to happen or not. Everything was going great until the nurse woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me that they took my daughter to the intensive care nursery because she had rapid breathing, a poor appetite and was getting really fussy. At that point we tried to breastfeed to alleviate her symptoms but I could hardly get anything out and she put up a fight every single time. It took me several days to get a decent amount of breast milk through pumping. Luckily, my boyfriend and I were able to board in an old section of the maternity floor so I could give her all of the breast milk I could as I produced it.

I can’t remember what the withdrawal scoring scale is called but at one point she got up to a 14. They were just about to dose her with methadone when her score suddenly dropped. It was such a relief. She stayed in the hospital for a total of eight days. They were the longest days of my life. I gave her breast milk longer than most parents do in that kind of situation, totaling two and a half months. We weaned her off of it as slowly as possible to minimize any discomfort. We measured the breast milk and took her down in milliliters. It sounds a little over the top and looking back it probably wasn’t necessary but I would do it the same way again because we never had to worry about how she felt. One thing that other moms pointed out to me was that when they test the babies they will add points for things that aren’t necessarily withdrawal symptoms. For example, it is common for a newborn to have diarrhea, be fussy or to have sleep problems but these are also symptoms that are considered to be withdrawal.

I understand exactly what you are going through and hopefully by now things are starting to look up for her. I plan on having at least two more kids and I can’t say I won’t still be in treatment. If I hadn’t been on Methadone my beautiful daughter would not be here with me every day. I know for a fact that I would not have been sober and could have done a lot of harm because I couldn’t do it on my own. The guilt is one of the hardest things to deal with but you have to remember why you did it in the first place.

I hope this helps,

Emily