Effect of Drugs on Baby?

You might peruse some of the posts on the Drug Exposed forum under the Special Needs and Attachment heading. I've adopted four children, all of whom were exposed/addicted to a fairly large variety of substances. We were very careful when we adopted the first time, listing out what we believed we could and could not handle in parenting. Happily God knew better than we did and we were matched with a child whom we likely would have run screaming in fear if we'd known up front what his diagnoses would be. After that we adopted children born addicted to at least one drug, and exposed to multiple other drugs. The kids had significant delays and issues relating to being born addicted. Some of these issues have resolved with time, some have just morphed into other issues as the kids have gotten older. Some of our kids may not be able to live independently until much older than the 'average' young adult, if ever.I can't tell what issues are related to which drugs, although perhaps I can attribute some things specifically to alcohol because alcohol is well documented, when compared to cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamine.Often children exposed to drugs have issues like dysfunction of sensory integration. You can Google that and find lots of info, but basically it is when the brain perceives input from the senses in an abnormal way. One of my kids had sensory integration problems and perceived all touch as painful. He had "tactile defensiveness" and avoided touch (like hugs) and wearing clothes was a painful trial for him (elastic, tags, seams, the texture of certain materials). Some kids have an under-response (hyposensitivity) and some have an over-response (hypersensitivity) to some sort of sensory input, and many have problems in multiple sensory areas.And then there's the biological vs. environmental question. (nature vs. nurture) Do kids have problems because of the drugs or because of their environment? I'll tell you now it's both, but there are whole books and academic studies trying to decide that question.Then you have to add in all the other components that play a part, like maternal health/metabolism, the individual health/metabolism of the baby, genetics, and all the variables that there are in the world. Most issues relating to drug and/or alcohol exposure come on a spectrum, from significant to minimal. It's often a scenario of preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. Then just leaping out in faith, regardless. :) The healthies newborn may, for reasons unknown, have a significant learning disorder and struggle for years to do the 'simplest' academic things. Or any number of other unpredictable things.