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Giving birth while on MMT My water broke 2 a.m. Saturday morning, November 24th. I went across the street to L&D Hospital (the hospital is across the street from the gate of the back yard-with my parent's house). I brought my methadone folder with all the info, plus all the regular stuff you take when you are in labor. I got there around 3 a.m. They did the internal. No such luck, it appeared the baby may still be breech, so two US's and 2 X-rays later they schedule me for a 7:45 C-section. The anesthesiologist comes in early to discuss pain management and such, and the drugs he will be using during surgery. He is going to do a spinal block rather than an epidural, and going to use 15 mg every three hours of morphine post surgery rather than duramorph in the spinal. Because they use Nubain or Narcan to control the side effects of Dura-Morph-which I can not have. Now by this time, they have pumped four-1000 ml bags to me. Surgery goes well. My daughter is born at 8:18 -they had a full neonate team ready in case there were problems. All went well. After I got to hold her, they took her, with my dad to the nursery. I had to stay and finish up, then problems started. I started to feel pain, so they knocked me out with a sedative. In recovery, I started in with withdrawals, despite a fair amount of morphine on board. So an RN sat with me, and helped restrain me at times during spasms. They dosed me with my normal dose of methadone, as well as morphine. I was given really good pain relievers to keep the pain at bay the first two days. I was given my methadone; 100 mgs in the a.m. and then 15mgs of morphine every three hours and 25 mgs of phenegran every 6 hours. Then they switched me to dilaudid every three hours (2 mg) and my normal methadone dose every day. Until last night when I got to come home, then I was given dilaudid every four hours for four days and I am supposed to call him if I am still not up to snuff. The OB had left a packet of methadone info at the nurses station so that the nurses would know what to watch for and to learn a little bit, it was great, everyone was positive, they asked intelligent, professional questions. I could not have asked for better care. My daughter was born at 8:18 a.m., Saturday, November twenty-fourth, 2001. She weighed 6 pounds 8 oz, 18 1/4 inches long. She was three weeks early. Her apgar scores were an 8 at one minute and a 9 at 5 minutes. She nursed three hours post surgery, and roomed in with me. She was showing signs of withdrawal, although mild, about four hours after birth. But they caught it very early. Her moro reflex, her startle reflex were both hypersensitive. She was starting to sneeze and had a runny nose. She was started on paregoric every three hours, round the clock - .02 mg. She is doing great, nursing, and getting well. We were in the hospital until last night around 6 p.m.. They kept us an extra day and a half because her bilirubin loevel was way up and she had to be kept under the UV lights in the isolette for four hours. It went down enough for us to safely come home. She goes to the Dr. tomorrow to make sure that she is stable on the dose, as they need her stable for a week before they can begin to decrease. It is a very slow decrease. The nursery staff were absolutely awesome. When I was rocking outside of her isolette, a couple of the RNs came up and said that they voted me the best Mom of the Year, for all I had overcome, and what a wonderful gift I had given my daughter. That was very special to me. They really wanted to learn about methadone and wanted to hear my story. They got tons of literature that I gave out, and then they were able to access stuff that I had not seen on some of the medical websites. I did not hear one negative comment, and I got a ton of positive comments.
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