\n<\/p>\n
Yet, throughout this courtship and marriage, even with a newfound home and another baby on the way, Ms Sabrina remained caught in the grip of addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By then, she had become dependent on Subutex, an oral medication prescribed by her doctor to help heroin users manage withdrawal symptoms. In the early 2000s, the drug was widely available through private clinics in Singapore before buprenorphine, its active ingredient, was classified as a controlled drug in 2006 amid widespread abuse.<\/p>\n
Enabled by friends, she continued to abuse Subutex even during her pregnancy, despite her husband’s repeated attempts to get her to stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eventually, when Ms Sabrina gave birth, her newborn daughter was handed over to her brother-in-law’s family, where she would remain for much of her childhood.<\/p>\n
“I did feel sad. I wanted to see my children. But \u2026 I also thought that I still needed my drugs, so I kind of just brushed it off.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Addiction maintained its hold on Ms Sabrina for the next several years, leading to two more jail terms, both of which she served while pregnant.<\/p>\n
She gave birth to two sons while incarcerated. After the delivery of the first son at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital at 30, under prison supervision, Ms Sabrina was allowed to keep the baby with her in prison temporarily.<\/p>\n
Forced to be sober within the four walls of that single cell, those months were the first time she learnt to be fully present with her baby, giving consistent care and attention to her son.<\/p>\n
She talked to him constantly, even while showering. She experienced \u2013 for the very first time despite being a mother of three \u2013 the excitement of hearing her baby, at six months, mimic the movements of her mouth, as if to say “mama”.<\/p>\n
And then she got into a fight with another inmate. Her baby was taken away from her and placed under the care of her brother-in-law’s family.<\/p>\n
Later, in 2011, her fourth baby was removed from her shortly after delivery, while she was still breastfeeding in the hospital after childbirth.<\/p>\n
She does not recall being given a clear explanation for the removal, but she believes it was due to her history of violence.<\/p>\n
“I became hysterical and miserable,” she said. “I thought my child was taken away from me for good.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Psychiatric medication had to be administered as she slumped into depression shortly after, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enough was enough, decided Ms Sabrina. After her release in 2012, she promised her husband she would change and began seriously working on her recovery \u2013 not just for her sake and his, but for all her children, including the two younger ones she would later have after getting sober.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Yet, throughout this courtship and marriage, even with a newfound home and another baby on the way, Ms Sabrina remained caught in the grip of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}