Just one excerpt:
"Elliana, who turns eight months old today, is here for a checkup at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She’s a patient at a special clinic that treats babies for neonatal abstinence syndrome, which occurs when babies are born to mothers addicted to heroin.
The infants can suffer tremors, sleeplessness, seizures and other withdrawal symptoms.
Elliana gurgles and wobbles a bit when Uebel sits her on the examining table. As she checks out the baby, Uebel quizzes Gaffney on Elliana’s progress.
“Is she holding things?”
“She takes stuff and then drops it out of her chair,” Gaffney says. “She looks at it, then she looks at me and laughs.”
“Good,” Uebel says.
The clinic’s goal is to monitor the babies, but also to support the mothers. Many, like Gaffney, used heroin and other opiates for years.
Gaffney, 28, quit cold turkey after learning she was pregnant. She’s living now with the baby at First Step Home, a treatment center in Walnut Hills. They plan to move into an apartment together soon.
After years of addiction, Gaffney’s goals are modest. She wants to raise her child in a normal home. She wants a normal life.
Uebel finishes the examination. “She looks real, real good,” she says.
Gaffney is relieved. She scoops Elliana into her arms and takes her appointment card for her next visit to the clinic in December.
“See you then,” she says.
(Ten days later, Gaffney is dead from a heroin overdose.)"