Four months pregnant in August 2023, Heather Hornberger turned herself in for violating probation on a years-old drug possession charge, knowing what awaits expecting mothers in prison.
After the labor, after the first skin-to-skin contact, after the first cry, a mother would have to hand over their newborn to someone — on the outside. Maybe a grandparent, or a friend, or foster care. It could happen within hours. Sometimes days. Then, they’d return to their cell, arms empty and a body ready to feed a child no longer there.
Heather’s arrival at the Indiana Women’s Prison meant she’d have a chance at a fate different from the majority of incarcerated pregnant women: a specialized unit where she and other incarcerated people could raise their newborns.
She was 35 years old, fighting for sobriety and starting her fifth incarceration since she was 18 — each one shaped, in some way, by addiction. She already had three older children, and knew the harm her previous stints on the inside inflicted on them — the ache of missed birthdays, first words and bedtime routines, and the hopelessness the separation conjured in her.
In the Breann Leath Maternal Child Health Unit, Heather was determined not to repeat the past. In late 2023, her little girl arrived. Heather named her Innocence.
“With Innocence, I held onto hope,” she said. “You’re not losing all hope like you do every other time (on the inside).”
I met Heather as she neared the end of her pregnancy, when I first began documenting the nursery program at Leath, and continued following her through the final months of pregnancy, through raising Innocence inside prison alongside a group of other women tending to their newborns, her eventual release, and later, Innocence’s second birthday.
Her story offers an intimate look at resilience, family, and the challenges of rebuilding life after incarceration.
Addiction and survival
Heather’s life has been shaped by cycles of addiction and incarceration since her late teens. Xanax led to pain pills, which led to heroin. Each sentence behind bars pulled her further from her children — entire chapters of their lives she can’t get back.
Her oldest son, Braxton, was three years old when she began getting into serious trouble. Ariel, her daughter, was just a year old when Heather went to prison for the first time. She remembers calling home and hearing her children cry on the phone. “I want you, Mommy,” they told her. Heather cried every day.
“And I couldn’t be there,” she said.
For years, separation defined her experience of prison. When she was inside without her children, she learned to numb herself to survive. “When you’re in there alone, it’s so hard to think about your home life,” she said. “It’s hard to do time and think about what they’re doing at home when you’re separated from your kids for so long.”
That sense of hopelessness is common for incarcerated parents. Across the U.S., most incarcerated mothers are separated from their children, often with limited visitation and little support for reunification. Supporters argue that prison nurseries help preserve maternal bonds, reduce foster care placements, and lower recidivism. Critics raise concerns about infant development in carceral settings and inconsistent standards across states.
Heather experienced that difference firsthand. “I was over looking over my shoulder and being high all the time. I’d lost so much. And I had so much to live for,” she said.
This time, she didn’t push motherhood out of her mind — she lived it, every day, inside prison walls. “It’s made a real difference with Innocence,” she said. “I had all the same responsibilities from day one, even in prison. It’s not something I put in the back of my mind.”
The prison nursery
Across the United States, fewer than a dozen states operate prison nursery programs that allow incarcerated mothers to live with their babies, typically for 12 to 30 months. These programs are often limited to women convicted of nonviolent offenses and require participants to comply with strict rules around parenting, behavior and sobriety.
Indiana’s program allows eligible mothers to keep their babies with them while receiving parenting education, substance use treatment, and mental health services.
Inside the unit, the environment reflects both the structure of the prison and the presence of infants. The usual sounds of correctional life — metal doors, overhead announcements, the movement of officers — are still there, but they are layered with the noise of babies crying, mothers speaking softly, and the routines of feeding and care.
The air carries a mix of cleaning products and the everyday materials of childcare.
Mothers move through a tightly regulated schedule while tending to their children, balancing the demands of incarceration with the constant responsibilities of parenting.
Those first months with Innocence marked a turning point. “My focus at IWP was being a mom,” she said. “It’s made it easier to get my focus back on not only being a mom for her, but my other kids too.”
Heather named her daughter after a moment that felt like grace. “We were throwing names out there,” she said, remembering a telephone conversation with Innocence’s father, who was incarcerated at another prison in Indiana. “He said ‘Innocence’ and then went on to say something else, and I was like — wait, go back. That’s it right there.” The name felt right.
“She is the most innocent thing out of the whole situation,” she said.
The day Heather and Innocence were released was joyful and terrifying all at once. Heather’s parents and oldest son arrived early, waiting outside. She felt like the day dragged on forever as she completed all the paperwork and waited for her turn to leave.
On the outside, Innocence cried in the car seat as they made their way to Denny’s, overwhelmed by everything new — the sounds, the space, the world beyond fences and barbed wire. “You go from being in one building all the time,” Heather said, “and everything is just new to her.”
Life after
Today, Heather works a factory job from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., dropping Innocence off with a babysitter before dawn. She’s stayed sober. She limits her social media, blocked old numbers and keeps her world small by design. “You can never get too confident in your recovery,” she said. “That’s when people mess up.”
She manages anxiety carefully, even turning down medications that could put her at risk. “I’m not going to take meds that’s going to cause me another addiction,” she said.
Her older children are still healing. One son has seen her overdose. Others struggle with anger and confusion. “They still have negative feelings they’re dealing with,” she said. “And I have to help them heal from that.”
That’s why Innocence’s presence mattered so much. “If I didn’t have Innocence in there, I was still going to have that same mentality — just to focus on me,” she said. “All my kids are my saving grace. But Innocence being in there with me saved me.”
Heather knows not every incarcerated parent is ready — or able — to change. “But I was ready. And the program pushed me in the right direction,” she said. She doesn’t pretend the nursery program alone fixes addiction. “It’s an individual thing,” she said. “You have to want it bad enough.”
What she wishes is simple. “Kids are a big issue for women and men in prison,” she said. “You take people’s kids from them, and you make it really hard for people to want to stay focused.” She paused. “Just because you’re a drug addict doesn’t mean you’re a piece-of-shit mom.”
Heather chose her daughter’s name before she knew how much it would come to mean. In prison, that name became a promise she tried to live up to — one diaper, one feeding, one night holding her daughter at a time.
“I want her to have the world,” Heather said. “I want her to have everything I didn’t.”
For the first time in her life, hope wasn’t something she was trying to survive without. It was something she was raising in her arms.
This article was written and photographed by The Marshall Project reporter Maddie McGarvey.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.