Does Being Clean Require Abstinence?
Megan knew her baby girl was going through withdrawal, because everything about her was tight. This was a feeling she recognized. “That’s what it’s like,” she explains. “You’re not yourself.” She holds up her fists to demonstrate. The baby wouldn’t stop crying. She couldn’t get comfortable. For almost the entire nine months of her pregnancy, Megan had been on buprenorphine (brand name Suboxone) to treat opioid dependency. Stephanie Bobby, the nurse in charge of the Pregnancy Recovery Center (PRC), warned Megan that withdrawal was a possibility. The chances were one in three, although Megan never thought it would happen to her child.
She was scared and didn’t want it to be true, but Megan knew she had to do what was best for her baby. The nurses at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where the PRC is housed in the basement, treated her baby for withdrawal, or neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), for 17 days.
Megan, who talks quickly and seems capable of getting anything done, stayed on buprenorphine for the next two years. When she and her husband — also treated with buprenorphine for opioid addiction — started talking about having a second child, the thought of putting another baby through withdrawal was unbearable. Megan wouldn’t even consider getting pregnant until she’d slowly weaned herself off the buprenorphine.