The price of drug addiction in babies

I have the opportunity to take care of sweet babies who are born with drug withdrawal syndrome. Their mothers took drugs while they were on their mother's womb. Others are on Subutex and Suboxone to combat the addiction. These are two drugs approved by US Drug and Food Administration to treat opiate addiction. Both drugs has an active ingredient called Buprenorphine, it is an opiod partial agonist, it interacts with the same receptors in the brain that are affected by opiates and thereby tricking the brain into believing that they encountered an opiate.

I am sad to see these babies go through withdrawal syndrome. Sweet innocent babies born into this world while their parents struggled to end their addiction on drugs. This is one of the many problems of our society today. There are different withdrawal symptoms that babies go through. It ranges from high pitched cry for hours and hours, inconsolability means they are difficult to console, their muscle tone are jittery and very hyperactive, they tremors and worst they can have seizures, they breath so fast, they vomit and have diarrhea. Depending upon the severity of their signs and symptoms, other babies go through withdrawal after a few days and other babies were put into replacement therapy such as Morphine to combat the effects of withdrawal symptoms. And in worst cases, if Morphine doesn't work, another drug called Clonidine as been added together with Morphine. In this case, Clonidine is used to help reduce for agitation, muscle ache,sweating,cramping, etc.

Medical Professionals used "Finnegan Withdrawal Scoring" for babies. It is a tool that scores three major systems in the body. That is Central Nervous system, Respiratory system? Metabolic and Gastrointestinal system.

Central Nervous system

• high pitched cry
• sleep duration
• tremors
• increased muscle tone
• excoriation
• twitching
• general convulsion.

Respiratory /Metabolic System

• sweating
• high and low temperature
• yawning
• mottling
• nasal stuffiness
• fast breathing

Gastrointestinal System

• excessive sucking
• poor feeding
• projectile vomiting
• loose stools
• watery stools

Babies need to be medicated with consistent scores of 10 and higher. They can spend few days and weeks at the hospital. The medication is slowly wean off based on their scores. The lower the scores the better. Then they have to stay24-48 hours and make sure that they do not go through rough withdrawal again and then they are cleared to go home.

There is a price to pay for drug addiction. And it is even harder seeing the ill effects of it on your own child.

Do they deserve it?

A thought to ponder.

Image from Pixabay