Tricia's Story
The inspiration behind Maddie’s Place was sparked in 2008, when a three-week old baby girl was delivered to the doorstep of the Hughes family in Spokane, Washington. With eight years of experience as a foster and adoptive mom of drug affected babies, Tricia, who was also a nurse, knew immediately that something wasn’t right. Spokane was just beginning to see an increase in babies withdrawing from opiates, and that was exactly what was happening to this baby girl.
For six long months, her body was ravaged with the symptoms of withdrawal. She tremored, broke into sweat, and struggled with incessant congestion and vomiting. She struggled to sleep and self-regulate, and cried the high-pitched cry of a newborn in pain. During this time, she needed constant care and comfort, and she rarely left Tricia’s arms.
A year later, she officially became Madeline, the youngest of the Hughes’ nine children. Through the experience of caring for Maddie, and her other drug affected children, Tricia developed many skills for nurturing these babies and made it her passion to learn all she could about how to care for their unique medical, developmental and emotional needs.
As Tricia became more aware of the overwhelming numbers of substance-exposed newborns in Spokane, she tried to convince her husband, Carey, that ALL of these babies needed this same attentive care from loving arms if they were ever going to thrive. Carey wisely suggested that if she truly wanted to address the issue effectively, she needed to find a way to replicate her care; to take what she had learned from her experience and from the many others doing this work, and create a “home” where each baby could experience the same kind of specialized, attuned and nurturing care that had helped Maddie and many other children heal and thrive.
Today, Maddie is a healthy teenager and is flourishing. And, after four years of persistence and the hard work of many, the center inspired by her story has come to fruition.