Over the years, Winchester Medical Center has been seeing an increase in the number of babies affected by their mother's recreational drug use.
Between the NICU and the nursery, about two babies a week are coming in, at-risk for drug withdraw or neonatal abstinence syndrome.
Mary Beth Ours has been in the NICU for twenty years. She says the most common drugs these babies are going through withdrawal from are heroin, or methadone or suboxone, which are used for people to withdrawal from heroin.
"The problem with drugs being used while mom's are pregnant or in utero is that it can actually rewire the executive function of the brain. So that's the part of the brain that controls behavior, emotions. It's that regulatory part of your brain that says no i shouldn't do that," said Ours.
Ours says they have to use morphine or methadone to get the babies through their own withdrawal symptoms.
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