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calviso t1_iyahuxq wrote

My wife is a NICU nurse. Before she worked at her current hospital she worked at a county hospital so she saw a lot of babies whose mothers used drugs while pregnant. With that said, take this with a grain of salt since this could be different depending on where the baby is born.

>Like, does the baby go through withdrawals once born?

Yes. Apparently addicted babies have a distinct high-pitched whine that makes it pretty apparent their mother used something while pregnant.

>If so, do doctors give the baby a little crack so the side effects aren’t too bad from the withdrawals?

She says that while the babies are definitely addicted and have a distinct high-pitch whine (compared to non-addicted infants) they never gave anything for crack or cocaine. The babies just had to deal.

Whereas they used to give morphine to the babies addicted to narcotics. But even that's not really a common practice anymore and now they also just let the babies "sweat it out" themselves.

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SuspiciousBeing6499 OP t1_iyak7p9 wrote

Good god, withdrawal as an adult is hard enough. But letting the babies sweat it out is so hard to imagine. Those poor souls…

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TyrconnellFL t1_iyb6njz wrote

Some babies still receive morphine or methadone if their neonatal abstinence syndrome is severe enough.

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Maximum-Till8785 t1_iycgrj4 wrote

Depends where you are. In Australia, we score babies on their withdrawal symptoms and methadone/morphine is titrated based off how high their score is. If they’re severely withdrawing, they are definitely medicated.

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