About Hushabye Nursery

Our Mission

Hushabye Nursery’s mission is to ‘embrace substance exposed babies and their caregivers with compassionate, evidence-based care that positively changes the course of their entire lives.’

The organization was founded by Tara Sundem, a neonatal nurse practitioner who witnessed firsthand the challenges of newborns exposed prenatally to opioids and those families trying to care for them.

Hushabye Nursery offers a safe and inclusive space where parents, caregivers, and babies – from conception through childhood – can receive integrative care and therapeutic support that offers each child the best possible life outcomes. Programs include prenatal and postpartum support groups, inpatient nursery services and outpatient therapies.

The Challenge

With nearly 50,000 opioid-related deaths in 2017, today’s opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history. The opioid crisis is made more complex when considering the growing phenomenon of co-occurring pregnancy.

Women who become pregnant while using opioids – both illegal and medically-monitored – are typically prescribed opiates throughout their pregnancies due to the risk of prenatal withdrawal and miscarriage. As a result, their babies are born into an opiate dependent state known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) which requires a complex and painful detoxification process in the days following birth.

In the state of Arizona, two babies are born every day withdrawing from opioid dependency.

Why Hushabye Nursery?

Hushabye Nursery’s care model provides the ideal setting for the family-centered Eat, Sleep and Console (ESC) best practice care protocol for infants experiencing Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). Hushabye Nursery is licensed with the Arizona Department of Health as a Level 1 Sub-Acute facility and is accredited through CARF International.

At Hushabye Nursery, each infant experiencing NAS and their parent(s) or caregiver share one of 12 private rooms. This allows parent(s) and caregivers to room-in 24/7, feed frequently, and provide the continual one-on-one soothing and bonding critical for recovery. Hushabye Nursery’s inpatient team members draw from their extensive experience to provide targeted care to infants that reduces Adverse Childhood Experiences. Our entire team – from medical staff to volunteers – are trained in soothing techniques shown to be effective non-pharmacologic interventions.

Hushabye Nursery’s use of pharmacologic intervention is around 8% compared with the average NICU use of 95%. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends non-pharmacologic management should be the first line of treatment for all newborns experiencing NAS. The National Association of Neonatal Nurses’ evidence-based practice reports that “[t]he Eat, Sleep, Console Model (ESC) is the number one modality that has shown to significantly reduce postnatal opioid use for the management of NAS and decrease length of hospital stay by as much as 73%.” The ESC model of care significantly decreases length of treatment and cost of care. ESC is the primary intervention for infants with NAS at Hushabye Nursery.