Drug-Dependent Infants Detox at Tenn. NICU

a quiet epidemic On The Rise where roughly one baby an hour in this country is born hooked on prescription painkillers their mothers are abusing these innocent victims face an uphill battle as we saw when we were invited into one special Hospital ward in Tennessee ABC's Juju Chang brings us this tale of Hope and heartbreak as part of our division-wide commitment to telling the stories of the invisible Among Us are hidden and America it's noon in the neonatal Intensive Care Unit at East Tennessee children's hospital and baby Grayson just 48 Hours old is shaking again he's tremoring in it Grayson was born with a serious drug dependency because his pregnant mother was addicted to painkillers now he gets morphine every 3 hours to cut the pain of withdrawal Grayson was brought here from a nearby hospital to this special unit for detox boxing newborns right now there are 23 tiny patients here going through withdrawal mostly from prescription pills like oxycotton vicadin or peret it's like they're inconsolable I know people probably think I exaggerate when I say they have this very fearful look in their eyes well they do good morning Carla Saunders is the head nurse of this special unit they'll have really bad Tremors really bad Jitters very bad irritability vomiting diarrhea yet stomach cramping Nightline was given rare access for 4 days and nights to witness firsthand what they see as a new and hidden epidemic in this country striking the most innocent of victims when I started you maybe had a withdrawal baby once in a while and then it was once a month and we got six this weekend all at one time it's gone from a drip to a flood a flood it is a flood after 2 days of waiting there's finally room on the ward for Grayson now we're trans bring his baby to the uh third floor he's fairly chinery has he needed a lot of Tylenol we've give it to him twice today cuz he's been around the borderline it's starting to look like they may begin weaning him off the morphine if it's tunold then they start weaning right Ashton just 19 years old is Grayson's mom he's done so good today good he's just so like happy big difference from two days ago yeah Mama needed you to be more awake she says she tried the prescription painkiller Roxy codone for the first time as a party drug while still in high school how easy was it for you to score pain killers they're pretty much easy to find if you want them it's everywhere it is crazy to see how many kids are strung out on opens Ashton says she lost a basketball scholarship to the drugs having tried to go cold turkey on her own she knows just how painful withdrawal can be you get cold chills your skin feels like it's crawling like like it's crawling literally I mean you just feel so you don't want nobody to touch you knowing how awful it feels what goes through your mind when you know that Grayson's going through that now it drives me crazy I mean it it literally makes me honestly it makes me beat myself up every day Ashton was trying to recover and on methadone when she got pregnant but doctors advise pregnant mothers not to stop using because the baby in their womb might suffer from potentially lethal withdrawal it's clear why when you see Grayson now nurse Saunders is helping develop a treatment program using a powerful combination of drugs trial and aor and lots of TLC it can take weeks even months for these tiny bodies to withdraw from what their mothers were hooked on how is um Grayson doing still having the jerk and Tremors and got the loose stool after days of progress baby Grayson suffers a setback on our fourth day on the unit Saunders still can't wean him off the morphine as she'd hoped not only is Grayson not going to wean tomorrow I'm going to go right for an increase for him now nurse Saunders has to break the news to Ashton Grayson this morning was starting to get a little more jittery and he's kind of progress through the day today and so um we've had to go up on his medication I think you can see him twitching pretty good and like he's went all crazy overnight pretty much it's like he's just went downhill this is just the probably the first dip in the roller coaster ride oh goodness okay buddy here you go and this is the increased dose but this will help settle his jerks down wake up wake up open you eyes you are so big and yet inside the ncu there are glimmers of Hope after 88 days here baby Mason is about to go home a moment that's Bittersweet for the staff oh you wanted in on this conversation I know you did tell them you want to tell them about it it's okay what goes through your mind when you hand over a baby that you've taken 3 months of your life to nurture and care for it it's never easy to say goodbye to them because we do get attacked but we know that we have given them their best shot at the first few days or weeks or months of their life 3-week old Grayson is one of the lucky ones his mother says she's trying to keep clean taking doctor prescribed methadone to wean herself from an addiction to painkillers your eyes look a little dilated to me are you still using I'm still on methodone now yeah I have been since I mean since I had him yeah but are using other stuff outside of them oh no no methanone is the only thing I've used since I got in the clinic how do you make it up to him from here on out how do you prove that you deserve to take him home you have to start just detoxing yourself you have to start doing it just like he's doing it if Grayson could understand what you said to him right now what would you say to him M sorry it's just hard I mean none of it was planned you know I wanted something better for him because I mean I grew up around it I know and it wasn't fun I didn't want that for him I wanted better for him because I wanted to be the mom that I didn't have for Nightline I'm Juju Chang in Knoxville Tennessee as of tonight baby Grayson is still in the hospital but could be sent home in a week in some states abusing painkillers during pres pregnancy is considered child abuse and is illegal but in Tennessee mother and child will be allowed to stay together as long as Ashton is in treatment our thanks to Juju

Channel: ABC News

Views: 2,743,513

Keywords: Drugs, Addicted, Pain, Killers, NICU, Babies, Juju Chang, Nightline, ABC, ABCNews, News, US, Health

Id: 2eP5EnFSG0c

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2012