Listen to this article
Estimated 9 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
When the pregnancy test turned positive in a bathroom in St. John’s, the woman holding it started to cry.
She was in a so-called trap house, a house used to sell and take drugs, and she was in a spiral of addiction.
“I was using crack cocaine very heavily. I was like a complete zombie,” said the woman whose identity is being withheld to protect her children.
“I hated that I had left my kids for this hell… but I just couldn’t stop using.”
She already had three children, all of whom were living with family members. She’d tried to get clean, get on treatment plans and get them back, but none of it had worked.
Until that pregnancy test.
She left the trap house and didn’t go back.
“I got away from it by the grace of God, and nothing will ever make me go back to it,” she said.
The first person she told was her father, who helped her get and stay sober. But not all women who become pregnant while using substances are able to stop.
Atlantic Voice26:09The babies born into the drug crisis
Meet one St. John’s mom who got sober during pregnancy, and one pediatrician trying to help every similar case she comes across. Both of them want to change a system that’s struggling to help moms and babies in Newfoundland and Labrador, as the drug crisis climbs. Listen in Treated Together, a documentary by Caroline Hillier.
50-60 babies a year
More and more babies are being born exposed to substances in Newfoundland and Labrador — and one pediatrician says drugs are only part of the problem in a system that doesn’t have enough support in place to help these families.
Dr. Anne Drover has been researching the problem she first witnessed around 2001.
“So that was just maybe three or four in that first year. Now we are seeing probably about 50 to 60 a year,” said Drover, a pediatrician and associate professor with the faculty of medicine at Memorial University.
There is no comprehensive record keeping of statistics for babies born exposed to substances in Newfoundland and Labrador, but Drover has been using patient charts to track and compile the current numbers.
Many of those babies are born to mothers receiving opioid agonist therapy, like methadone or Suboxone, and are doing well.
“When we see these women who have been really well managed on their opioid agonist therapy, they’re having excellent outcomes of pregnancy,” said Drover.
“They’re doing very well. They’re going to their medical appointments. They’re getting all their prenatal care. Baby is being born at term with an excellent size and having minimal to no withdrawal symptoms.”
‘Not an addiction’
Babies who have been exposed to drugs in utero can be born with neonatal abstinence syndrome or neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome and can be jittery, and may have trouble feeding and sleeping.
“It’s not an addiction,” said Drover.
