A Fresh Start Offered Drug-Addicted Mothers : Social services: Stanislaus County program helps them to get clean before children are out of reach.

Women who exposed their unborn children to drugs are getting a new chance to get clean and be good mothers.

In many places, drug-addicted mothers are prosecuted for passing illegal drugs onto their unborn babies or lose their children to foster care and adoption.

Stanislaus County’s First Start recovery program helps some mothers get off drugs before their children are out of reach.

“Once they do papers for adoption, it’s either sink or swim,” said Sharon Kennon, mother of two drug-exposed children. “That’s rock bottom. You have to get it together or just keep living on the streets until you die.”

Sherry Hutchinson was limited to weekly visits with her 8-year-old daughter, Charity, while in the program but hoped that they eventually would be reunited permanently. Charity realized a foster home was best for her during that time and talked of her past life in a house where her parents regularly took drugs.

“When I was in the drug house, they never let me sleep,” Charity said.

Her mother recalled that the normal mother-daughter roles were almost reversed.

“It was like the kids were taking care of us, and we were wondering how long it would take for the police to take them away,” she said.

Forty-one of the 49 mothers who completed the 24-week program have custody of their children.

“I had already lost custody of my two other kids, and they were going to take this one away. The pain just became too much for me,” said 33-year-old Kim Theis.

Fearful that doctors would find her blood tainted with heroin, Theis delivered her latest child at home. But she went to the hospital when she had trouble completing the pregnancy.

Within hours of birth, the baby was made a ward of the court.

“I wouldn’t have hit my bottom if they hadn’t forced me. I told them they were nuts. I wasn’t an addict,” Theis said.

To make sure participants stay clean, First Step does random drug testing.

“We’re asking these women to lead totally different lifestyles,” said project coordinator Judy Jagusch. “We’re asking them to give up family members who are involved in drugs and to care for drug-addicted babies that cry for 12 to 15 hours a day and don’t respond to them. Then we’re asking them to give up the only thing that makes them feel good--drugs. It’s a tall order.”

For Valerie Kitchens, it’s an order she takes very seriously.

During her past two pregnancies she did not feel the babies kicking, punching or pains because she was usually high on drugs.

The realities of motherhood came to light when her oldest daughter began mimicking drug injections.

“She’d tie her arm off and stick something in it, just like us and our needles. That’s how she played. That’s all she knew,” Kitchens said.

With her third child on the way, Kitchens rubbed her stomach and flinched a little as the baby kicked.

Hopefully headed down the road to complete recovery, Kitchens found strength from her children.

“Now she mimics us when we kneel down to pray,” her daughter said.