SAFFORD, Ariz. — Rylan is a healthy and hungry 5-month-old baby girl who now lives with her grandmother Lori and the rest of her family in a small Arizona farming town.

It's a world away from where she was born: the state prison complex near Phoenix, where her mother, Regan Clarine, is still locked up.

“She's very fun-loving. Very hyper, fun to be around, kind of always the leader,” Lori Clarine*, Regan’s mother, said about her daughter. “Regan was the one that I knew would be sneaking out the window by the time she was 3 years old. I would say, ‘You know, she's going to be our problem.”

Two years ago, when Regan was 18, she was arrested for having prescription painkillers illegally and charged with possessing a narcotic for sale. The court sent her to drug rehab, where she met and started dating Rylan's father. She found out she was pregnant just two days before a judge sentenced her to two and a half years behind bars.

“She holds her emotions very well but once she's talking to me alone, it's complete devastation,” Lori* said.

Regan was transferred from county jail to Perryville State Prison, where Lori said she was denied prenatal care.

Lori showed a note from Regan, saying she was advised by a doctor to get an ultrasound to check for any possible problems with her pregnancy.

“She did not get that ultrasound,” Lori said. “I believe had they done the ultrasound they would have known they had the wrong date.”

Lori said she believes the prison medical staff induced Regan early, which might explain why Rylan was born small.

“It just infuriates me,” Lori said.

After 48 hours in labor, Regan had to have a C-section. Lori said the medical staff didn't stitch the wound shut. Instead, they dressed it with butterfly bandages.

“They sent her back to the prison and for the first two days things are going OK,” Lori said. “But by about day three she's noticing it's oozing. It's not looking right, it's looking infected.”

Lori said doctors refused to see Regan – and it got worse from there.

“Regan woke up one night and something just told her to get up,” Lori said. Her daughter was covered in blood. "Her clothes were soaked. So she was terrified and she just screamed for you know a guard to come help her. And they came took her to see a nurse. And you know, the nurse said, ‘Well, come back at 10.’”

Regan was sent back to her cell instead of going to the hospital.

“She would cry because it scared her so much to be able to look inside her body was just freaking her out,” Lori said.

After two weeks of living with an open wound, Regan was sent to the prison hospital.

“I truly believe I could have lost my daughter had they not given her antibiotics” before her delivery, Lori said.

Regan spent five weeks in the hospital and, slowly, the wound healed. But her ordeal was not over.

“They decided she had been there long enough, that she could go back to her yard,” Lorisaid. “But it was still open a little bit. And so they decided that the best thing to do for this would be to pack it with kitchen sugar … we're talking sugar that you get from, because they donate it from McDonald's from Burger King, you know? They're standing there ripping open these little packs of sugar and filling that wound.

“I called my brother who is a doctor and I said ‘Sean, they're talking about pouring sugar into Regan and have you ever heard of this?’ And he said no way are they putting sugar in her wound. He said it's just got to be some medical term like maybe it's medicine with glucose in it. He said, ‘it's probably just a nickname of something. Nobody would pour sugar in a wound. So don't worry about it.’”

Sugar was used to treat wounds before the advent of antibiotics in the early 1900s, but it's no longer accepted medical practice. America Tonight asked the Arizona Department of Corrections to comment on Regan’s care, but they declined.

While we were talking to Lori, Regan called from prison and described her ordeal living with the fist-sized opening in her abdomen.

“It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life,” Regan said.

When she did get care, she described seeing medical staff putting sugar in that wound.

“They were taking the kitchen sugar and pouring it inside and putting wet gauze over it and taping it,” she said.

We asked Regan if she actually saw prison officials opening up McDonald’s sugar packets and pouring the sugar inside her wound. “Yeah,” she said, adding that she was worried if it was sanitary.

“I was scared,” she said. “You know, it’s prison, maybe these packets are old, if there's something spilled on them and it dries, you know.”