Part 1 Of 2

PREGNANT AND ADDICTED

For Moms And Babies, A Chance At A New Life

Hampton Roads has one of Virginia's worst rates of low birth-weight babies
- - often because those children are born to alcoholics or drug addicts. The
South-Eastern Family Project offers hope to pregnant women and their children.

The taste hits Tonya Turner suddenly - bitter and burning, like an aspirin
dissolving and dripping from her nostrils to her tongue to the back of her
throat.

Tonya recognizes it instantly.

Heroin.

She hasn't taken the drug in months, but somehow, here is its flavor in her
mouth again. It floods her with memories of getting high, telling her that
even after five months in an intensive rehabilitation program for pregnant
women and new mothers, she's still sick.

"It's not so much a craving as a reminder that I have a disease," Tonya
says, rubbing her temple.

A disease she gave herself.

"It will always come back," Tonya says.

She bites into a grilled cheese sandwich, bypassing the enchiladas on the
lunch menu because she doesn't want their spices to get into her breast
milk. Surrounding her in a cafeteria in downtown Newport News are women who
started their pregnancies the same way she did: as drug addicts.

They come from all economic backgrounds and races. Some are broke or
homeless or both. Some worked as prostitutes to raise money for cocaine,
heroin or alcohol. Others threw away comfortable lives.

They live together now, in a two-story brick building next to public
housing complexes and a busy highway overpass. They stay at this place,
called the South-Eastern Family Project, during their pregnancies and for
as long as two months after childbirth. Some come voluntarily, others under
court order. Their newborns live with them throughout their stay.

The goal is to save babies from the devastating physical and mental damage
caused by drug use during pregnancy. It's an effort especially needed in
Hampton Roads, which has more infant mortality and low birth-weight babies
than most parts of Virginia. Many unhealthy babies are born to mothers
addicted to drugs or alcohol. Experts blame a higher poverty rate - a risk
factor for substance abuse - and not enough programs offering free or
low-cost prenatal care.

The Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board launched the family
project in the fall of 2001 to attack the problem. About half of women are
from the Peninsula, while others, like Tonya, come from as far away as
Richmond or the Eastern Shore.

"No child should be hurt like that," says Felicia Tyler, director of the
project. "And I want to educate these women so they won't bring another
child into this world while they're using drugs. It's just not fair."

Felicia prays that none of the women will use drugs again. She's also
realistic: In the 11/2 years that the program has been open, 69 percent of
the women have had at least one relapse. But 31 percent didn't relapse.
More miraculously, Felicia says, all of the babies have been born healthy
so far.

That's enough for family project staff to keep fighting.

In their building's sunny living room, they hang up posters on how cocaine
poisons unborn children. Beneath the drawings, infant carriers and bottles
of formula stack up on tables. Sharp hunger cries from the babies interrupt
meetings on self-esteem and parenting skills.

Felicia tries to turn everyone into a family, so there's a lot of laughing
and yelling and crying and fighting. Unlike addicts in other rehab
programs, these women also are new mothers, coping with withdrawal pains
along with pregnancy pains and sleepless nights.

Although every woman at the family project has had her own complicated
journey, Tonya Turner's is similar to many others: She has been in jail.
She has too many children to support, no matter how much she loves them.
She doesn't mind hard work but has made terrible decisions that left her
without a job or a home of her own. She's pretty, even after drugs have
rotted some of her teeth.

Tonya is tough but vulnerable, and quick to anger. She feels guilty about
putting her unborn child in danger but isn't sure how to leave heroin
behind. She faces long odds in getting past her mistakes, but she wants to try.

And she swears that this time, she'll never, ever touch drugs again.

Tonya is 31 when she starts the family project. She was born in Richmond to
teenage parents, who, according to several family members, didn't spend a
lot of time with their daughter.

When Tonya was just 2 weeks old, she went to live with her grandmother,
Juanita Neblett, a warmhearted but busy woman with 10 children of her own.
Tonya grew up in the projects as a quiet child who faded easily into the
background, Juanita remembers.

"It was always 'Yes ma'am, no ma'am,'" Juanita says. "She would cut school
sometimes, but she'd never get in trouble for it because she was such a
nice person, so polite."

But Tonya was always sad about her parents' absences, family members say.

"You need that love," says Tonya's aunt, Teressa Burrell. "We all tried to
give it to her, but it was still missing."

Looking back, Juanita regrets trying to protect Tonya so much. She wishes
they had talked more about Tonya's parents and her hurt feelings and the
drugs and violence she saw on the streets. Juanita also wishes her
granddaughter had been louder, maybe even a little bit rude.

"If your child is sassy, you can pick up on more of what's going on," she
says, "and when they're getting into trouble."

Around age 16, Juanita says, Tonya started staying out past curfew. She
left high school a few credits shy of graduation, although she later earned
an equivalency degree. "I was just ready to do my own thing," Tonya says,
shrugging her shoulders.

That was around the time she first tried heroin, when she was 18 and
curious. The drug - growing in popularity locally and across the
retardation and chronic illnesses such as asthma.

Tonya has a problem, though: Doctors don't want her to go through heroin
withdrawal while she's pregnant. The vomiting, diarrhea, sweats and chills
could dehydrate her and possibly even kill her child, they say.

So like many heroin addicts at the family project, Tonya has a prescription
for methadone, a synthetic form of the drug that she takes once a day to
keep her cravings and withdrawal symptoms at bay. Babies can be born
addicted to methadone, which can make them more sedate and withdrawn than
normal. Some doctors also believe long-term side effects include learning
disabilities and attention deficit disorder.

Still, doctors usually can wean babies off methadone safely.

That doesn't mean it isn't painful.

Tonya's older daughter, now 5, was born addicted to methadone and had to
spend a month in the hospital, detoxifying. For days, the baby shook and
wailed, wouldn't eat and suffered from diarrhea. While the girl is still
small today, Tonya says, she's healthy.

Tonya hates methadone, but she also knows her decisions have left her
without a choice. If her dose is even a few hours late, she starts to sweat
and get chills. She clings to the fact that small amounts of methadone get
into breast milk, which could ease her baby's withdrawal. Tonya never
breastfed her first daughter, but she promises to nurse De'Ja.

She remembers that promise around 12:30 p.m. every day, when she stands
over a kitchen sink holding a small plastic cup of methadone. She swigs
most of the red, syrupy liquid in one gulp and finishes it off with a tiny sip.

She winces as she swallows. Methadone tastes sickly sweet to her, like the
strongest cough medicine.

"I dread this," Tonya says, washing down a dose with a glass of orange
soda, "but I'm just trying to do it right this time."

Like many women at the family project, Tonya has some scares during her
pregnancy. Sometimes no one - not even doctors - can positively link the
problems to substance abuse, but no one doubts that drugs often are to blame.

In late June, in her third trimester, Tonya needs an ultrasound because her
amniotic fluids, the liquids that cushion babies and give them room to grow
in the womb, have fallen to a dangerously low level. Felicia has seen at
least four other women in the family project in the same situation.

Tonya's ultrasound brings good news, though, perhaps because she has been
downing bottles of water since she got into rehab. Her fluids are back to
normal and her baby has a strong heartbeat. In the ultrasound images, De'Ja
has her left hand up to her mouth as if she's covering a chuckle.

"Already a prima donna," Felicia jokes.

Tonya laughs.

"I'm just so relieved," she says. "I don't have to be high-risk anymore."

The news is only a temporary reprieve from worry, but it's a piece of hope
for the other women at the family project. As Tonya wipes down the kitchen
tables - her assigned chore for the day - they flock around her to check
out the pictures.

"Oh, look at that little face!" says Jill Dudley, a crack addict, as she
hugs Tonya. "That's gotta keep you going strong."

Cassandra Dockery isn't there to help Tonya celebrate, though. Two months
before her due date, Cassandra's blood pressure has climbed to 143/127, far
above the 140/90 mark that indicates trouble. Doctors put her on bed rest,
letting her get up only to use the bathroom.

That doesn't work well enough. A month later, doctors have to induce
Cassandra's labor because her baby's heart rate is so low. Her son,
TyShawn, is born weighing 5 lbs., 2 oz., by medical definition a low
birth-weight baby.

But TyShawn doesn't wail, shake or show signs of addiction, even though
Cassandra used crack, alcohol and marijuana early in her pregnancy.
Cassandra is thankful, but she knows problems could surface throughout her
son's childhood.

"I just hope nothing bad shows up later," she says.

TyShawn will be her last child. Cassandra asks doctors to tie her tubes, a
move encouraged but not required by staff at the family project. Tonya
plans to do the same.

In mid-July, Cassandra brings TyShawn back to the room she shares with
Tonya. The women say they don't mind the cramped quarters, because by now
they feel like sisters. When Cassandra looks at Tonya, she doesn't see an
addict. She sees a good listener who prays every night that she can leave
drugs behind.

"She's changed," Cassandra says. "She's thinking more about all the people
in her life she loves, and, you know, that she needs to change herself to
be good to them. She talks more about what's bothering her and she's not
as, I don't know, angry."

On the night of July 28, two weeks before her due date, Tonya prays harder
than usual.

Around 8:30 p.m., she starts to have stomach cramps. She can't sleep, even
when TyShawn is quiet. Two hours later, she feels wetness on the insides of
her thighs and realizes her water has broken.

De'Ja is ready to be born.

TOMORROW: Tonya gives birth to a baby girl -- but will the child be healthy?