I do know of one choice that I made when I was not sober. I am quite sure that I decided to have my second child while I was intoxicated. Now I know that sounds like a stupid idea, but I was thinking that I was being quite a good mother by making this decision. You see at this point in my life I was drinking and pill popping pretty hard and I thought that what better way to sober up than get pregnant! Yeah that sounds like a great idea. This in fact would have been a great idea, but I was soon to find out, not only was I pregnant, but I was also hooked on pain killers. You see I never tried to stop taking pain killers in the year or so since I had started taking them so I had no idea that when I got pregnant that stopping the pills was going to be impossible.

Opiate withdrawal is a living hell on earth. You get so sick. There is the physical sick that you get, the stomach aches and the diarrhea, but also there is a horrid case of anxiety that takes over your brain that cripples you beyond belief. There were a few days during the very beginning of my pregnancy that I tried to stop taking them, I swear to god I tried, but I ended up getting so sick I was afraid that I was going to lose the baby. I did massive internet search on the subject. Granted talking to a doctor would have been better, but I was scared. The internet said that going through opiate withdrawal during my first trimester would possible cause me to lose my child. So I made the decision to continue to take the pain killers during my pregnancy and hope for the best.

The whole pregnancy was terrifying. I would get an ultrasound every chance I got and I bought a heartbeat monitor so that I could hear the baby as well. Each day I just took enough pills to get me by, no getting high, and no getting sick. At the end of the pregnancy I think I was down to 2 pills a day. The birth of that child was the most terrifying two days of my life. Wondering if he was going to start going through withdrawals, wondering if he was withdrawing every time he cried. Wondering if the Doctors knew, wondering if I should tell the doctors and nurses so that he could get the care that her needed. And to make matters worse I was all alone. My husband was at home taking care of our first child so apart from the in laws and my family there was a lot of time to panic in my room about whether or not I was going to walk out of this hospital with my child or not. As it turns out in the end my child was not born dependent, nor was he taken from me at the hospital. That was a huge relief, but now the relief is gone and there is guilt, there is fear and there is anger. Guilt over taking pills during my pregnancy, fear that I have caused my child the developmental delays he now suffers from (he’s 2 now and he still does not speak), and anger at myself for being so selfish.