COLUMBUS, Ohio — Baby M arrived in our neonatal intensive care unit the other day. Barely 24 hours old, she was clearly in pain. Her high-pitched cry pierced the unit again and again, her tiny legs twitched uncontrollably, and she couldn't sleep. It's difficult to comfort her — no amount of swaddling, holding, rocking, soft humming, offering her a pacifier, or other strategies soothe her.
Like the multitude of other babies in this NICU at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Baby M was born dependent on drugs that her mother took while pregnant. It's likely Baby M is in withdrawal from heroin or OxyContin, but we won't really know for certain until we can talk with her mother and see her test results.
Twenty years ago, we rarely encountered babies with what is today known as neonatal abstinence syndrome in Central Ohio. Now it is so common that we will soon have an entire NICU devoted to caring for babies with it. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 24,000 drug-dependent babies were born in 2013, the last year for which there are complete statistics. That's one baby every 20 minutes.
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