Canada - Opioid-dependent babies: How an Ontario hospital is helping newborns cope

[S.J.B.]

Opioid-dependent babies: How an Ontario hospital is helping newborns cope
Sarah Bridge
CBC
December 17th, 2016

The day Brenda Banks found out she was pregnant with her third child was the day she decided to get clean.

The Belleville, Ont., resident had started taking percocets after her first two sons were born. She says she took the pills "to feel better," but eventually, she felt sick without them.

It was while seeking help at a local addiction clinic two years ago that she found out that she was pregnant. Doctors put her on a methadone regimen that would help reduce her cravings for painkillers, while avoiding dangerous withdrawal symptoms that could harm the baby.

"I was scared at first," says Banks, now 28, and holding the hand of her blond, red-cheeked baby son, Amias Calladine.

She says that throughout the pregnancy, she "was always expecting the worst."

Read the full story here.

If babies born to opioid-dependent mothers are ripped away from their mothers' arms at birth and put in the ICU, they show "withdrawal" symptoms.

If the babies are allowed to stay with their mothers like any other baby, and their mothers are not made to feel like criminals, they are far less likely to show these symptoms.

The funny thing is that methadone is well-known to be the drug which is most often correlated with so-called neonatal abstinence syndrome, yet getting mothers on to methadone seems to be helping in this case.

As I've argued before, "NAS" is based on very flimsy evidence and this story just goes to show that the problems seem to be coming not from the mother's opioid use, but from how hospitals deal with mothers who use opioids.

 

[Felonious Monk]

As I've argued before, "NAS" is based on very flimsy evidence and this story just goes to show that the problems seem to be coming not from the mother's opioid use, but from how hospitals deal with mothers who use opioids.

Well fucking duh. This applies to basically everything we do about drugs--the fix is worse than the problem. The DEA is the biggest "drug problem" we have.

 

[pofacedhoe]

like the rats and the cocaine lever.

a horrible environment leads to seeking

a satisfied life see's that behaviour disappear