(Source; MIRS.news, Published 05/13/2024) The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is putting $1.3 million from the opioid settlement toward keeping babies exposed to addictive drugs with mothers in the same room after birth.
The process, called rooming-in, would be expanded to five hospitals as a strategy to help provide support for families impacted by substance use. That includes a focus on the increase of drug screenings for pregnancies and helping infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS, which is caused by street and prescription opioids.
“Evidence shows mothers and newborns benefit from staying together. For babies with NAS, it helps decrease the length of stay in the hospital and reduces the need for medication interventions,” said DHHS Chief Medical Executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian.
The hospitals getting the funding would be Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Covenant Medical Center in Saginaw, OSF St. Francis Hospital in Escanaba, University of Michigan Health-Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, and Bronson Battle Creek.
The $1.3 million would renovate rooms to add darkening shades, bassinets and dimmable lights.
Benjamin Brady, an assistant professor at Western Michigan University’s School of Interdisciplinary Health Programs and public health research scientist, said the room-in method is one of many new emergent ways of helping treat substance abuse disorder.
Babies with NAS used to be kept in the intensive care unit for up to 20 days while they were weaned off opioids.
“The risk of doing that is it creates a separation between the mom and child. Those early days are really important for the mother and child bonding and really important for other health-related life trajectories,” he said.
He said the method had cut the time of the babies in hospitals from 15 days to just over eight days.
“It’s the non-complicated approach of saying: ‘Well, what this baby needs is just love and holding, and swaddling, and cuddling and as much time with somebody,’ so every time it cries, instead of morphine, pick it up cuddle, swaddle and hold it,” he said.
Megan Butterfield, a Hurley Medical Center NAS nurse, said she has seen a change in how parents with substance abuse disorder were interacting with their children, going from being scared or absent to nurturing caretakers.
“It is amazing how things change when more support systems and education are in place. The bonding that has transpired is absolutely beautiful and something every mother should be able to experience,” Butterfield said.
One of those mothers who was able to bond was Jessica Clark, who said she didn’t have to leave her son in the NICU after he was born.
“I was able to be with my son the whole time and bond with him. Coming from such a judgmental world, it felt like a safe place,” Clark said.
Brady said there was much of that judgment still around substance-use disorder, whether it was heroin, alcohol or other addictive drugs. It was also what facilitated the changing of the language surrounding substance-use disorder.
He said there was different levels and types of treatments.
“In the old days, we called them detox programs. We don’t really use that language anymore,” he said.
Opioids and alcohol withdrawal can be fatal for those trying to get off of them.
He said in the past people who ended up relapsing were thought of as just not being strong enough to control drug use or were just not ready to quit, but when they started looking at substance-use disorder as a disease, the lens of treatment shifted.
“We don’t do that for any other chronic health condition. For example, if you have diabetes, and you eat too much sugar one month you’re not going to get kicked out of your diabetes management program,” Brady said.
He said it was a move to being consistent and working with people to help them more than punish them.
He said professional caregivers don't use terms like “addict” or “junkie.”
“Even folks who are using drugs will still call themselves addicts or junkies. That’s how they learn to view themselves,” he said.
He said by using those terms it doesn’t put them in the realm of a patient, but in a lower category or lesser person.
“If somebody holds a negative, discriminatory or stereotype view of a person, they are less likely to help them and more likely to make judgments about whether the person is compliant or making the right decisions in their life,” he said.
Brady said it was a matter of allowing people the room to change rather than resorting to the idea that, “I’m just a junkie, that’s who I am verses a person who has behaved or is behaving in a certain way.”
He said helping the moms and helping the babies was the best outcome, and not just being focused on one or the other.
“Being dependent on opioids is best managed and treated when we offer psychological, sociological and physiological treatment options and services. In the past we were just far too inconsistent in doing that,” he said.
