Newly Born, and Withdrawing From Painkillers

[poopymcpoop]

BANGOR, Me. — The mother got the call in the middle of the night: her 3-day-old baby was going through opiate withdrawal in a hospital here and had to start taking methadone, a drug best known for treating heroin addiction, to ease his suffering.

The mother had abused prescription painkillers like OxyContin for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, buying them on the street in rural northern Maine, and then tried to quit cold turkey — a dangerous course, doctors say, that could have ended in miscarriage. The baby had seizures in utero as a result, and his mother, Tonya, turned to methadone treatment, with daily doses to keep her cravings and withdrawal symptoms at bay.

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers. While methadone may have saved Tonya’s pregnancy, her son, Matthew, needed to be painstakingly weaned from it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us/10babies.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

 

[Khadijah]

*Sigh*....Here we go again.

Before all the ignorant and uninformed hating starts, methadone is completely safe for pregnancy, and if you got any doubts about that, just let me know. Id be happy to provide a list so long that youll fall asleep before you can finish reading it of studies that been done that irrefutably prove that methadone is very safe for pregnancy and that its highly recommended that any woman who is on methadone and gets pregnant STAY on it.

every time this subject comes up, people come out the woodwork spouting off all kinds of emotional-ass shit with no base in logic or science.

Yea, drug abuse while pregnant is bad. Bein hooked on dope or oxys or fuckin watever and ABUSING drugs while pregnant is a shitty thing to do.

However, being on METHADONE while pregnant, as either maintenance treatment or pain management, aint even close to being the same thing, and theres research out the ass to prove it as many times as you can question it.

God, I can just see the shitstorm on the horizon....

 

[bpayne]

This article makes me sad, as a drug abuser myself having gone through withdrawals multiple times, I just cringe to imagine the idea of an innocent newborn child forced to suffer like that in his or her first days on earth. This hits me especially hard as I am a stay at home father and love my daughter more than anything in the world. I could never imagine my daughter having to suffer like that.

 

[Khadijah]

God, this article is so fucking ignorant it makes me want to bang my head against my table.

The mother had abused prescription painkillers like OxyContin for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, buying them on the street in rural northern Maine, and then tried to quit cold turkey — a dangerous course, doctors say, that could have ended in miscarriage. The baby had seizures in utero as a result, and his mother, Tonya, turned to methadone treatment, with daily doses to keep her cravings and withdrawal symptoms at bay.

THIS is EXACTLY THE RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION THAT WOMEN ARE ENCOURAGED TO DO IN THIS SITUATION.

NOT GETTING ON METHADONE, and attempting to detox off opiates during pregnancy, can cause SPONTANEOUS ABORTION. The article says that right there--so WHY ARE THEY TREATING HER BEING ON METHADONE LIKE A BAD THING??

She did the right thing in this situation. She couldnt change the fact that she was pregnant and was using, which is a shitty fucking thing to do. But the BEST THING SHE COULD POSSIBLY DO in the situation she was in was to get on methadone.

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers. While methadone may have saved Tonya’s pregnancy, her son, Matthew, needed to be painstakingly weaned from it.

It aint always that "painstaking." between 10 and 30 percent of infants born to mothers on methadone never experience any withdrawal symptoms of any kind at all. A roughly equal amount only have mild to moderate symptoms and dont require any medication at all. Babies who need medication to detox are NOT the majority.

Infants like him may cry excessively and have stiff limbs, tremors, diarrhea and other problems that make their first days of life excruciating. Many have to stay in the hospital for weeks while they are weaned off the drugs, taxing neonatal units and driving the cost of their medical care into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Wow, the author sounds so concerned! He must really care about these women and their medical bills.

Oh, wait, nevermind, I get it -- They want to point out how expensive the treatment is becuz everybody knows all the women "like that" are on medicaid and public assistance, so hes just concerned about "our tax dollars" going to pay for it. Its the PUBLICS concern becuz they are the ones paying for all this, since every ex addict and woman on methadone, you know, "those kind of people" are naturally on Medicaid so the public has a personal interest in this type of situation! Its "THEIR" money paying for it!

Like the cocaine-exposed babies of the 1980s, those born dependent on prescription opiates — narcotics that contain opium or its derivatives — are entering a world in which little is known about the long-term effects on their development. Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts, and there is no universally accepted standard of care for their babies, partly because of the difficulty of conducting research on pregnant women and newborns.

FIRST, the "crack baby" situation has been debunked several times now. It just wasnt true. The truth came out a few years ago, and I remember reading right here on BL when the story broke. Babies were born underweight and in bad health becuz their mothers were living a horrible lifestyle, not eating right, exposing themselves to diseases and shit like that, not becuz of the cocaine. A publication like the NY Times should know better than to even bring that shit up becuz it was published in mainstream media that there really was no such thing as a 'crack baby' and it was all hype.

Second, research on methadone treatment in pregnant women has been going on since the 1960's and theres a wealth of information available on it to anybody with the simplest googling skills.

Third, "Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts" where did they get that one from? Pregnant women addicted to opiates who require treatment (methadone) are at the TOP OF THE LIST of ANY treatment program, and they take precedence over EVERYBODY else on the waiting lists. They are top priority in treatment programs and methadone clinics, and the doctors are falling over themselves to get them on MMT and stabilized.

Women who are ACTIVELY abusing drugs and DONT want to quit may be another story. But any woman who is using and finds out she is pregnant and wants to get on MMT can go to any clinic and get bumped to the top of the intake list becuz doctors know how important it is for those women to get treatment.

Way to make it look like these women are "untouchables", horrible people who even a doctor sworn to helping people wont take in. 8)

Those who do treat pregnant addicts face a jarring ethical quandary: they must weigh whether the harm inflicted by exposing a fetus to powerful drugs, albeit under medical supervision, is justifiable.

Well, the hundreds of studies on the subject might help them out a little bit!

This is such a bullshit fucking article. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the governments drug research groups, which tends to be very conservative, wholeheartedly supports and recommends methadone treatment during pregnancy to addicts and women already on mmt who find themselves pregnant.

There is a standard in the entire medical community that MMT for pregnant women is safe and effective.

Its not some kind of ethical problem that doctors must stay up all night figuring out--Its the STANDARD PROTOCOL to keep women on MMT during pregnancy, and theres plenty of long term research to back it up.

“I’ve had pharmacies that have just called back and said: ‘This lady’s pregnant. Why do you want me to fill this scrip? I can’t do that,’ ” said Dr. Craig Smith, a family practitioner in Bridgton, Me. “But when you stop and think about what actually happens during withdrawal and how violent it can be, that would certainly be not in the baby’s best interest.”

Right. And when you actually read the reasearch and realize that the risks are relatively few to begin with, and then consider the benefit, any doubts should be completely destroyed. Lets see....If the woman stays on methadone, the baby may be lower than average weight and have a smaller head circumference, and 60-90% chance that it will experience withdrawal. It has been proved as safe for pregnancy time and time again by well known respected researchers.

If the woman gets off it, her baby will most likely experience seizures, developmental problems, and possible death.

real tough decision.

“It’s really remarkable how little we know about the effect of prescription drugs and even nonprescription drugs on the fetus,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse. “There are real roadblocks in terms of helping us advance the field.”

Interesting, since the National Institute on Drug Abuse has a lengthy section on its homepage about the safety and effectiveness of methadone during pregnancy and strongly encourages women to stay on it.

I guess maybe shes talking about the effects of opiate ABUSE, like heroin, and other painkillers, but the way she phrases it makes it sound like we dont know if MMT is safe or not when just about every study done on it firmly comes down on the side that it is.

Dr. Mark L. Hudak, a neonatologist in Jacksonville, Fla., is helping to revise the pediatrics academy’s guidelines. “There are commonalities, but it’s not like you can go to a Web site that says, ‘This is what should be used by everyone,’ ” Dr. Hudak said. “No one knows what the best approach is.”

Well, maybe you dont, but the generally recognized standard in the US is that methadone is the safest drug treatment available for pregnant women addicted to opiates.

There is growing debate over treatment for pregnant women addicted to prescription drugs, in light of concerns over the effects on their babies. .....And for addiction treatment, [methadone] can be obtained only at federally licensed clinics where most users have to report for a daily dose.

Which is a good thing as far as the health of the mother and baby, because the clinics doctors can closely monitor the mother and babys health and reaction to the drug and keep close tabs on how the treatment is working.

The concerns over the effects on the womens babies....well, the effects of being on methadone are a lot less bad than the effects of NOT being on it and having your baby miscarry due to your detoxing,so, It aint too much of a debate to me. So many of the people protesting the use of methadone in pregnant women are completely ignorant about the actual risks and benefits, and are only reacting out of this emotional "drugs and pregnancy are a terrible combination, always, no matter wat!"point of view.

A growing number of addicts are instead taking buprenorphine, another drug used to treat addiction that some studies suggest staves off drug cravings as effectively as methadone but is less likely to cause withdrawal in newborns. In rural areas of the nation, where methadone clinics are few, buprenorphine is considered a promising alternative because it can be prescribed by primary care doctors and taken at home.

But theres one small problem--there is far, far less information about bupe and its safety in pregnancy. Methadones been used for almost 50 years in pregnancy. Bupe has been around for about 10 years as suboxone/subutex, and there are virtually no widely recognized studies on its safety for pregnancy.

Experts say that since many drug users also smoke and abuse alcohol, not to mention that they face extenuating circumstances like poverty, it is difficult to tease out the effects of each substance on their offspring.

“Most of the literature suggests consistently that the drug exposure itself is not the primary concern,” said Karol Kaltenbach, a professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia who studies addiction in pregnant women. “It’s the cumulative effect of the drug-using lifestyle — poverty, chaos in the home, domestic violence. All those things affect development.”

Thank you. thank you . thank you. This right here folks, is the big issue.

Opiates themselves are not teratogenic. This means that they do not directly cause any birth defects or diseases, they are not neurotoxic like alcohol.

The way that opiate addicts commonly live tho, can be. Not eating right, not taking prenatal vitamins, not geting prenatal care, possibly sharing needles exposing yourself and the baby to all kind of STDs and other diseases, possibly having sex for drugs, using a drug like heroin that is totally unregulated and can sometimes have dangerous cuts in it, living in a constantly "running" lifestyle, all chaos and no peace, and worst of all, the CONSTANT WITHDRAWAL. When a baby is exposed to withdrawal its hell on its development. like the article said it can cause many problems worst of all miscarraige. The constant sick-well-sick-well up and down shit is probably one of the worst things you can do to a baby when it comes to your habits, and Id bet my last dollar that has a whole damn lot to do with the birth defects and other problems noticed in opiate abusing women who were not in treatment during their pregnancy.

The shitty lifestyle does far, far more negative things to the baby than the simple intake of an opiate in the body. Thats why when mothers are stabilized on methadone, live a 'normal' life, eat a good diet, get proper prenatal care, and all the shit that they DONT do when they are addicted, all those risks almost completely disappear.

The fact that most hospitals will not deliver the babies makes doctors even less likely to treat the women. “It’s mostly ignorance,” Dr. Publicker said. “It’s a concern that it’s a risky proposition and that they’re going to wind up with an ill baby.”

And that right there, the part in red, pretty much sums up so many peoples attitudes about the subject.

 

[Khadijah]

This article makes me sad, as a drug abuser myself having gone through withdrawals multiple times, I just cringe to imagine the idea of an innocent newborn child forced to suffer like that in his or her first days on earth. This hits me especially hard as I am a stay at home father and love my daughter more than anything in the world. I could never imagine my daughter having to suffer like that.

I was on methadone for a long time and then i found out i was pregnant. I stayed on it my whole pregnancy like my doctor told me to and when my kid was born he had some minor symptoms, but it was over very fast. he didnt need any medication or nothing and now hes a happy and totally healthy kid. I love him more than the world which is why i stayed on the done--i refused to risk his life just becuz of ppls opinions of 'being on drugs during pregnancy."

 

[SangerRainsford]

*Sigh*....Here we go again.

Before all the ignorant and uninformed hating starts, methadone is completely safe for pregnancy, and if you got any doubts about that, just let me know. Id be happy to provide a list so long that youll fall asleep before you can finish reading it of studies that been done that irrefutably prove that methadone is very safe for pregnancy and that its highly recommended that any woman who is on methadone and gets pregnant STAY on it.

every time this subject comes up, people come out the woodwork spouting off all kinds of emotional-ass shit with no base in logic or science.

Yea, drug abuse while pregnant is bad. Bein hooked on dope or oxys or fuckin watever and ABUSING drugs while pregnant is a shitty thing to do.

However, being on METHADONE while pregnant, as either maintenance treatment or pain management, aint even close to being the same thing, and theres research out the ass to prove it as many times as you can question it.

God, I can just see the shitstorm on the horizon....

QFT

Only thing I'd say is that methadone during pregnancy is bad - IF the doctors don't know to keep the baby on it, but that's something that legality hinders to a significant degree.
That said, this kind of reminds me of what I'd said in the afghanistan thread of this nature - get some f'in m'dones there!!!

 

[SangerRainsford]

khadija - the ignorance and hate on subjects like this will be the same regardless of methadone-facts. The same people, once informed the methadone route is safe, will simply revert to "shouldn't have needed methadone/been addicted in the 1st place" :/
// I wonder whether the doctors knew she was on MMT, and if so, what typical protocol is for a dr who KNOWS what should be done...something makes me think there's probably a barrier that makes doing this in any kind of fluid manner impossible.

 

[K8eBayB]

Agree with Khadijah

Couldn't have said any of that better myself. So over hearing people who have no education about the subject saying how horrible it is that a woman is on opiates while pregnant. Not all drugs are teratogenic, but I doubt they even know what that means. Did you go to fucking medical school? No, then why the fuck are you telling me that what my doctor is recommending is wrong? And Khadijah, you're right they have been using methadone for over 40 years and if there were ever any long-term side effects you can bet your ass that today in 2011 that methadone wouldn't still be used, but guess what? It is and the babies are fine. Would I recommend that someone take opiates while pregnant just for the hell of it? NO, but when you are pregnant and addicted then you have to make the best decision and methadone is the best thing. I watched my son withdraw and it was not the way they are describing it. They do everything they can to make sure that the baby is comfortable. Those side effects they mentioned are what a person who would withdraw with no medical intervention would experience, but that's not what they do with a baby.

 

[SangerRainsford]

I don't know about trying to portray Methadone as some super-safe compound, it's just that it's a helluva lot safer for a baby than withdrawals, and is a helluva lot better for an addict than up/down'in it on heroin.

 

[TheLostBoys]

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers. While methadone may have saved Tonya’s pregnancy, her son, Matthew, needed to be painstakingly weaned from it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us/10babies.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Yes, being on pain killers is bad while pregnant. This article makes pain killers look like they are the down fall of human kind. What about the mothers that drink alcohol & smoke cigs while pregnant like theres no tomorrow.

They write pain killers are ravaging communities across the country, LMAO......sounds like a crack epidemic.

 

[SangerRainsford]

It shares a decent amount of characteristics w/ the crack epidemic (so does methamphetamine :/ )

 

[SangerRainsford]

Lostboys- I just noticed this in another thread's article:

And on Tuesday, the Obama administration announced plans to fight prescription drug addiction nationally, noting that it was now killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined.

 

[TheLostBoys]

^^^^^^^^^^^^


Holy cow........are these actual facts or is this government propaganda like usual?

 

[SangerRainsford]

Honestly, I got no clue lol
It's definitely a huge problem in the bay-area of FL, I was dumbfounded at how common the shit was when I 1st lived in the area; So, from where I'm sitting, even if the national #'s aren't on-par, I know this area is up there. It does seem that it is starting to rival crack even in nat'l #'s now tho, but of course these types of epidemics aren't wholly comparable due to their nature (stimulant v opiate; lack of blood/crips ;P, lack of some public reason why the st.'s are flooded <no contras to fund>)

 

[Dancing Bear]

i think the lesson we should all take away is to simply not have children at all then it doesn't fucking matter what dope your doing. i believe (and i don't doubt a lot of people do too) that over population is a much worse problem then drug use

 

[SangerRainsford]

yeah, and nukes/MAD is a pretty big problem, too....unsure wtf that has to do w/ the thread tho
/and btw, comparing drugs/overpopulation is almost funny because drugs work against overpopulation ;P

 

[Mora Fiend]

yeah, and nukes/MAD is a pretty big problem, too....unsure wtf that has to do w/ the thread tho
/and btw, comparing drugs/overpopulation is almost funny because drugs work against overpopulation ;P

THANK YOU! I have been arguing this as a reason for legalization for years.

 

[SangerRainsford]

It's funny you say that, I've been *thinking* the same thing for a very long time. I tend to keep anything "population control" to myself tho, not really a pleasant topic for many..