Drug addicts are known to try to conceal their habit. But during pregnancy things are different.

“Every woman wants to try and have a healthy baby,” said Patty Genday, executive director of women's services at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital. “They want to help themselves. I do think most women when they are pregnant, they don't try to hide it.”

Even if they do seek help and get on medications that help curtail their addiction, their babies are still at risk.

Magee-Womens, along with other hospitals in the region, has seen an increasing number of babies who are affected by opioids their mothers used while pregnant.

Some of the babies have birth defects that affect them throughout life, while more commonly they suffer from drug withdrawal — called neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS.

The number of newborns hospitalized for NAS in Pennsylvania has increased by 1,000 percent over the last 17 years, according to a recent research brief from the Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council.

The rate jumped from 0.12 percent in 2000 to 1.5 percent in 2016. Statewide there were 1,912 NAS hospitalizations in 2016. In Butler County, there were 70 and a rate of 1.93 percent.

Many pregnant women in the region who are struggling with addiction get referred to Magee-Womens' Pregnancy Recovery Center, Genday said.

Through the recovery program, women are converted to suboxone or methadone if they had been mixing other drugs with opioids. Both help stave off withdrawal symptoms.

Last year UPMC received a state grant that allowed it to expand its recovery program to five new locations, including an office in Pullman Square in Butler.

Newborns are typically kept at the hospital for two days after they are born — three if they were born by cesarean section, said Dr. Jennifer Kloesz, who practices neonatal medicine at Magee. But if the babies were exposed to opioids or other drugs while in utero, they are kept for five to seven days.

If babies are diagnosed with NAS, they stay for an average of nine additional days. Some stay for as long as a month, Kloesz said.

Symptoms of NAS include excessive crying, fever, seizures, poor feeding, rapid breathing, sleep problems, rash, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Contrary to what some people hear on the streets from fellow drug users, doctors can't know if a baby will have NAS or birth defects based on what dosage of opioid was consumed by the mother, Kloesz said.

Methadone and suboxone, while much milder than heroin or fentanyl, can still give babies NAS. Conversely, in some cases women with strong metabolisms regularly shoot up heroin during pregnancy and still have healthy babies.

“It's such an unknown,” Kloesz said.

There are about 1,000 babies born each year at Butler Memorial Hospital, and the staff there also monitors newborns for NAS if they know the mother was using drugs, said Dr. Christania Morganti, a pediatrician at the hospital.

Staff at Butler Memorial will first try non-medical treatments to soothe the babies.

“The nonpharmacological thing we do is basically to not overstimulate them. We keep the room with low lights, we swaddle them and make sure there is not a lot of noise,” Morganti said.

They also do “kangaroo care” — where the babies are kept warm by being held against their mothers' stomach, she said.

If doctors believe that a child needs medication to get over their NAS, they are transferred from Butler Memorial to the neonatal units at Magee-Womens Hospital or West Penn Hospital.

At Magee-Womens, babies with NAS are given a very small dosage of morphine and antiseizure medication, Kloesz said.

The hospital is well-known for its cuddler program. Volunteers hold, rock and sing to the babies.

“These babies like motion. If a cuddler is able to hold them in their arms and rock them, that helps a lot,” Kloesz said. Due to its popularity, the hospital is not currently accepting any new volunteer cuddlers.

“I think everyone wants to try to help with this problem, this is one way for the community to help make a difference,” Genday said.

Morganti agreed that while many mothers are open about their substance abuse problem, drug screenings sometime reveal that they had used other types of drugs during pregnancy.

“The moms are usually honest about all the medications and any other street drugs they are on, but a lot of times they don't know what they've had. Even marijuana can be laced with something else,” she said.

Both UPMC and Butler Health System will allow mothers on suboxone or methadone to take their babies home, officials said.

If they admitted to using street drugs during pregnancy, social workers at the hospital and Children and Youth Services get involved.

Officials never want to take a baby away from its mother, Genday said. Even if the mother is addicted, they do interviews to find out if there is a grandparent or other responsible adult at home to help with the baby, she said.

While NAS is temporary, opioid exposure in the womb can cause other medical problems.

NAS babies were more likely to have low birth weight, prematurity, difficulty feeding and respiratory distress, according to the Healthcare Cost Containment Council's brief.

Many opioid-exposed babies have small heads and underdeveloped brains. Some develop learning disorders later in life such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, experts say.

Exposure to opioids and opioid analgesics in the womb has also been linked to spina bifida, buildup of fluid in the brain, glaucoma and congenital heart defects, according to a 2011 study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pediatricians also test babies for 18 months to see if they contracted hepatitis C from their mother, a viral infection spread through needle use, Morganti said.

Both Butler Memorial and Magee-Womens have also seen an increase recently in mothers who used cocaine during pregnancy, which is known to cause strokes in newborns and other defects.