They are the innocent and smallest victims of the heroin epidemic here in Hampton Roads -- babies born addicted to the opiate. Their numbers have skyrocketed over the last two years.
At one major hospital in our area, at least one baby is born every single day exposed to opiates. Many of those babies were given heroin in the womb as their mothers shot up while pregnant.
Their cry is hard to hear. It pierces a room. The pain is palpable in the shrieks of a newborn going through withdrawal. Their wails have become part of the somber soundtrack for nurses at Sentara Norfolk General.
“It's kind of heartbreaking because there's not much that we can do,” Nurse Autumn Weaver said over the cries.
The magnitude of the situation is not lost on these nurses. They carry the weight of caring for innocent babies, children who did nothing to cause their own suffering.
“It's hard,” Autumn reacted. “It's hard because a lot times we can't do anything to help them.”
While a couple years ago, these nurses would see maybe one baby born addicted each week, now, they're at a point where it's a daily occurrence.
In Clinical Nurse Manager Janel Moore's twenty years at the hospital, she’s never seen anything like this.
“You come to work to help families come into the world and that's why we do this as a specialty and when you have a patient population that is suffering, it is a difficult thing to deal with on a daily basis,” she explained.
On the day 13News Now visited the Special Care Nursery at Sentara Norfolk General, there were 43 babies in the care of nurses. Five of them were being treated for withdrawal.
According to data we analyzed from Virginia's Department of Social Services, Norfolk has the second-highest number of reports of suspected substance abuse by mothers during pregnancy in the entire state.
Recently, Sentara had to train every nurse on the floor to be able to evaluate the newborns for signs of withdrawal. Whereas at one point, there were just a few specialists who could care for these babies, now everyone must know how.
“They can't tell us that they're feeling bad,” Janel described. “So we have to watch them for the way that they're showing us signs of how they're feeling. Many times they cry inconsolably. They have a difficult time with sounds and lights and touch. They can have tremors or shaking.”
They monitor the symptoms until they believe it's time for some sort of intervention. Often times that means once again giving the baby drugs -- morphine or methadone. Some parents balk at even giving a newborn Tylenol, but these specialists are giving narcotics to newborns and they're necessary.
“We give them as little as possible to keep them comfortable and then we wean them off of it so that they're down to zero and comfortable,” Janel said.
Even something as seemingly normal as nursing can be difficult for these babies.
“When you have a baby who’s withdrawing, the nervous system is overloaded by all the different forms of input and the effect of withdrawal on the baby,” Occupational Therapist Steve Brown said. “So their nervous system doesn’t receive stimuli the same way. So that fluid that’s entering the mouth is sometimes received as something that’s caustic and uncomfortable. The babies aren’t able to swallow it effectively or if they are trying to swallow it is ineffective, so it goes into the airway or it goes up into the nose.”
The consequences can be as serious as the baby failing to thrive.
“If it’s not taken care of it can lead to things that are very major that could affect the infant’s life,” Brown added.
This is a team effort. There are doctors, nurses and occupational therapists all working from a deficit to get these babies' lives off to the right start. They need help from the mothers, who are often afraid because of what they've done that their babies will be taken by child protective services.
“The truth is we're mandated reporters,” Janel told us. “We will have to report it. In most cases we're able to come up with a plan that is safe and effective and there's no interruption of the family.”
Janel wants to make sure those women in crisis know there are treatments, programs and providers who want to help.
“Let us know what your baby has been exposed to so we can start the appropriate treatment and get all the pieces in place for a home plan while you're here,” she advised. “There's no reason to believe they can't be completely normal if everything can be turned around.”
As of right now, state social services data shows the only jurisdiction with more cases of suspected substance abuse by pregnant women is Richmond.