Might get NB on methadone

I haven't heard back yet but I put in on a nb baby girl on methadone. Parents are heavy meth users. She is white and part NA which I said I would always avoid but never say never...keeping my fingers crossed I will have to be trained is it hard to deal with methadone? Thank you everyone! Soooooo anxious what if they wait til Monday or tues to tell us? :hissy: I'm ready to :moped:

I had a newborn on methadone. It's pretty easy, but they should give you an exact schedule for her taper. You need to be pretty good about always giving her it around the same time. We timed it according to when we'd usually be home so it worked well. Weird giving it to a tiny baby, but it's such a small amount. It took care of her extreme withdrawal symptoms (actually discharged her originally without it) but once we stopped it completely even with the slow taper, she was quite fussy for awhile and mild tremors returned. Poor babe. She was withdrawing from heroin.

We had a baby on methadone last year. They said he was withdrawing from Rx meds. It was very rough because he screamed so much! It was a very intense, high pitched scream and was worst right before the next dose was due. He was also on an apnea machine that went off frequently and unnecessarily. Good luck with your little one, I hope she's easier. I don't know if we would take another baby on methadone.

After our baby leaves us we are going to take a break from drug addicted babies for a long long time. Our baby (placed straight from the NICU) cried all the time, was in constant pain, and liked nothing. She stopped crying constantly around week two or three, but was still pretty irritable. (she was around a month old by this point)By a month and a half she was like a different kid. I put her on a sleep schedule and she sleeps 10-12 hours a night now and is happy and alert and smiling through the day. Sucks she is going to go back soon to a mother that doesn't deserve her.

Ahhh, forgot to say, Good Luck with the placement. They are hard work, but worth it in the end, of course :)

Thanks guys..who knows we may not get her...but I hope we do. I love love love babies..she would be a hospital pickup. I have all the clothes and stuff. Tis time I am experienced with babies. Not with methadone but with all the littles I take it is going to happen eventually. I hope this isn't a tribal fight down the road scares me...

Doggymom I hope everything works out for you. I love hearing about people getting calls about new placements.

Our baby spent 5-6 wks in the NICU withdrawing from crack and heroin. He was on morphine and weaned off for 3 days before they released him. Luckily he's a pretty content little guy, unless he's hungry and then he screams that high pitched out of control scream that took me by surprise the first time I heard it. I really thought something was wrong but now at 5 mos I know he just uses it when he's hungry or really, really mad b/c nobody has picked him up yet. The scream really gets me tho, don't remember that my BS ever had a scream like that. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him when he was withdrawing. :0(Good luck and early congrats.

Our new addition[baby] that we got yesterday is tribal as well. I've heard that you can have tribal kids for a decade+ b/c severance is hard. Many here won't even take tribal b/c they are harder to adopt and then if you do adopt there's still a chance that someone from their tribe can come back and take them . I was told by a worker that she thinks our little one will be with us long term b/c she is medically fragile, and her particular tribe is so far away. She went on to say that their tribe doesn't have people that like taking medically fragile. It's funny b/c when I saw her 2 days ago in the hospital I had this feeling I'd have her a loong time....like yrs. We'll see....

How old we're your babies on methadone when they came home? This baby is coming off of meth....:hissy: Ty for the info guys it's very educational.. :3d:

Mine was released from the hospital at 4 days old on nothing because she was born in a suburban hospital that wasn't used to seeing this kind of thing and they were ignorant. They use a rating system to rate the withdrawal by the baby's symptoms. The original nursery had rated her quite high and transferred her to the hospital's small NICU. The NICU disagreed with that rating and gave her a much, much lower score. That is why they released her to me on nothing with virtually no info on what she could experience. So the baby was having pretty severe tremors with me almost immediately. Took her to the ped the parents' picked out and he acted like I was making it up. The parents were with too so I couldn't be as direct as I wanted. They wanted me to take her back the next day so I did. It was a Saturday so I saw another ped at the same practice (with the parents again) and she started throwing out absolutely bogus diagnosis for these tremors. I was more frank this time, but she didn't respond to it. It was like I was in the twilight zone. They had it in the file that this baby was born positive for heroin! Thankfully, I had the best investigator CW I could have and she was as frustrated as I was so she ended up being able to get in touch with a child abuse specialist ped who worked at one of the children's hospitals in the city here. He was furious when he heard her symptoms and I was told to immediately bring her in to that hospital's ER. She then had one of her episodes in the ER so they saw exactly what I was talking about. She was admitted for three days and put on methadone. So she was 9 days when she came home again with me, but she did spend 48 hours with me before being readmitted. Sorry for the novel!

How is the methadone administered ? Please don't say shot...I do my own shots diabetic but the thought of sticking a nb... :( I can but so sad...

Thanks for the input good info! Idk when she is being released...guess it could be on a weekend?

It's an oral med ;) Easy. My baby took it fine.

If mom was on methadone during the 3rd trimester , rather than meth or heroin, that is better for the baby and will make the withdrawl easier on both of you. Find out everything that was in the meconium and if there is methadone there, that is a good thing. Ask if mom was being prescribed methodone while preggers.