Drug Abuse While Pregnant Essay

At any given time there is at least one drug addicted baby is born at NICU "It’s actually pretty horrifying and more and more out of control at the same time"( Brochu). Drug abuse while pregnant shouldn't be permitted. It hurts lots of babies. Mothers doing drugs while pregnant hurts much more than just her. Drug abuse while pregnant is wrong, it can seriously bring harm to the baby; when baby addicts are born there first couple days are pure agony, the baby can grow up with mental and health illness, it is also a cause of death for mom and baby.

When babies are born as they grow older they can get mental and health illness. Chronic cocaine use can mess with the males frontal lobe. The frontal lobe controls emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behavior (Mathias). No matter how old they are they will have these problems, because they were so little when they were first exposed (Mathias). The chemicals in cocaine hurt the baby's brain so as they get older it is harder for them to think. “Exposure to cocaine before birth may affect the way a child's brain functions many years later, according to a recent NIDA-funded study.

If we don’t fix this now it might be the next crack baby epidemic ( Brochu). Babies in this condition are so sensitive. Like crack babies or those born with fetal alcohol syndrome, infants diagnosed with “neonatal abstinence syndrome” exhibit dangerous signs of withdrawal: jitters, trouble feeding and putting on weight, diarrhea, respiratory problems. They are so sensitive to light and noise, their cribs or incubators have to be covered with blankets. To wean them off the drugs, they’re fed morphine or methadone. Even after the typical three-month recovery process, many face developmental delays and health implications from premature birth (Brochu). In the last 5 years the drug addicted baby rate has gone up 5 times the