A LIFEBOAT IN THE MIDST
OF A RAGING TYPHOON
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When the emergency room nurse told Amanda she was pregnant, she thought she was delivering good news. It seemed to the nurse that Amanda, then 31 and married, should be happy that the vomiting, exhaustion and other symptoms that brought her to the hospital were not signs of an illness.
“The nurse was very taken aback when I started crying,” Amanda said.
But there was no way a stranger could have imagined what her life was like back then.
Amanda had been using drugs since she was 13. She had been addicted to heroin and, though she had managed to graduate from college with a degree in communications, her life was a mess.
“My husband was using drugs,” she said. “We were living in a couples’ shelter on the Upper East Side and I was on methadone.”
“I was unhappy and scared about life in general, so when I found out I was pregnant, I was super confused and didn’t know what the right decision would be. In my heart, I wanted to have a baby, but in my head there were all these problems. I had no place to live; I didn’t have a job; I was on methadone.”
Her husband’s addiction was relentless and he had been arrested repeatedly for crimes related to his drug use. “I couldn’t depend on him,” she said. “He was one of the main stressors in my life.”
Eventually, it was her sister-in-law who listened to her fears and anxieties, and ultimately told her that it was clear she wanted this baby. She said, “Far less capable women do this,” Amanda recalled. “I hung onto those words.”
She decided to keep the baby, but she was overwhelmed about what lay ahead.