Greg interviews Rebecca Crowder, the Executive Director of Lily’s Place. Lily’s Place is a Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) facility that provides observational, therapeutic, and pharmalogical care to infants affected by prenatal drug usage.
Greg asks Rebecca about the problem of NAS and what symptoms can be identified in infants suffering from the syndrome. Rebecca explains that due to the opioid epidemic, NAS has become a national problem. However, identifying babies affected without screening the mothers beforehand can be difficult. “[The] symptoms that these babies go through depend on the type of drug the mother used, how much of the drug she was taking while she was pregnant, how long she used the drug, and how the body breaks down the drug. There’s such a large range of symptoms that these babies go through and every person, every baby is different on how their body metabolizes these drugs. So there’s just such a huge range of issues these children can have… When a baby is born, they initially do not show symptoms immediately. Often, it can take up to 72 hours before the symptoms start to show. So babies are monitored closely to see what types of symptoms start to show. Some of these symptoms include mottling, diarrhea, excessive crying, high-pitched crying, excessive suck, fever, hyperactive reflexes, increased muscle tone, irritability, poor feeding, rapid breathing, sleep problems, sweating, trembling, tremors… there’s also some more severe problems such as seizures, vomiting… there’s just a huge range of things you can see in these babies.”
Listen to the podcast to discover how Rebecca’s local community has started mandatory drug screening for every mother entering the hospital to give birth. And how this paired with an NAS facility like Lily’s Place is helping both infants and parents alike.
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