Pregnant women should take 'smoking test': what do you think?

This has angered me.

I have never been offered this test (I have a 14 month old DS and am 24 weeks pregnant), but I would absolutely refuse to do it were it offered to me. I don't smoke, but I find it utterly offensive. All pregnant women are asked if they smoke and are given access to smoking cessation services. We all know how damaging smoking can be to an unborn child. What this is, however, is a public funded lie detector test, which reduces women to being treated like children. If a woman smokes and does not intend to stop whilst pregnant, nothing the NHS does or offers will make her. That is her choice, regardless of whether society regards it as a bad one. Being coerced into taking a test to check whether she is telling the truth is a gross breach of trust and a waste of public money.

I have also heard women say that they have been offered the test on the basis that it will check whether they have any faulty appliances in their house, masking the real reason behind it. This is, at worst, a state sponsored lie, and at best extremely misleading and is sure to undermine trust between patient and supposed carer.

What's next? Tagging to track alcohol consumption? Drugs testing? Unpasteurised dairy products and shellfish testing?

Not every woman choses to get pregnant though do they. I find your post quite inflammatory and well, down right wrong.

And I'm a non smoker, never have smoked, hate smoking but I would never have the opinion you have.

I think there's a difference between motor biking and smoking , well slightly.

I do genuinely wonder why some one who has chosen to get pregnant would then choose to tank them up on carbon monoxide before they are even born, these kids don't have chance.

Its become far too lenient on smoking/drinking mothers, and before I get called unsupportive, support comes in many forms, I'm simply being honest as an ex smoker who went cold turkey, I do understand how hard it is,
But I don't think patting on the back 'there , there I know love have another cigarette' is a good approach.

Any woman is free to assess her risks. I have a friend who went on her motor bike until she was 8 months pg.

I think it's appalling.
Are they also going to check what every expectant mother is eating every single day? or if she drives carefully?

Gosh, that's a rather shocking way to treat women isn't it ?

How about you ask her if she smokes, and then, depending on answer, offer information and support to reduce or give up smoking ?

I only used to smoke occasionally on high-days and holidays (OK sometimes one in the garden after work) but gave up drinking and smoking before I got pregnant, as many women do, or once they know they're pregnant.

I think you've got to start out on the midwife/woman relationship trusting in the woman. I wouldn't be at all happy with the messages I'd be picking up from this approach.

the midwives job is to look out for the baby err no no no! The midwoves job is to care for the pregnant WOMAN, that involves making sure the baby is ok as well.

Trust between a midwife and her patients is fundamentally important and this test can undermine that... 'catching smokers' ffs.

Advice and support is fine, unnevessary tests that dont show much amd are easily 'cheated' ie by not smoking for twelve hrs beforehand are pointless, a waste of money and they undermine the relationship betweeen midwife and patient.

I have no issue about smoking expectant mothers being judged, its awful!

I was a smoker, I stopped as soon as I found out, I don't think there is an alternative in my view.

BUT i don't like this idea, it implies women can't be trusted to be honest,
although I understand there frustration,
I used to work with women who stank to high heaven of smoke but would swear blind they haven't.

When we have enough MW to actually do all the current tests as well as deliver the babies around them, we can add on more stuff. Until then, FFS, just give them a leaflet and let them get on with it.

Am also completely against the test, just another example of women being patronized in pregnancy.
I don't smoke and wasn't even offered the test up here in Aberdeen, I did have a good relationship with my midwife though.
When I was two weeks overdue and desperate to avoid induction I made some quip about needing a glass of wine before she gave me a sweep, she laughed but then felt obligated to say that she would pretend she hadn't heard that....Crazy as I was on tramadol and co-codemol daily at that point and about to be pumped full of pethidene etc, surely all of which are way worse for the poor baby than a measly glass of wine at 42 weeks.

They should ask pregnant mothers if they smoke and also if they are in passive smoke and if any other children they have are in secondhand tobacco smoke. There's no need for a test as it's as though they don't believe what the person is saying.

Just say in the slight chance this has anything to do with Faulty Boilers, how can they tell a Smoking Pregnant woman from a Pregnant woman that has been exposed to a Faulty boiler or Air pollution from high traffic for that matter?

I believe it's another attempt of taking control of the human population so we all adire to the idealistic view of the Perfect woman.

I don't smoke, never have and it would be a waste of people's taxes to make me have a test which i assume has little to do with Boilers and more to do with Smoking. Just say this is to do with other Co2 sources, how can they tell what or how it has been exposed to you and if so do woman with faulty boilers get accused of smoking or those that do smoke get noted to have a faulty boiler

See a simple £20 carbon monoxide detector and a simple yearly gas check is quite sufficent, so i believe this Boiler excuse is absolutely ridiculous because they would'nt be able to differenciate from the two.

I've worked in this field for years, and the stuff about being able to detect a faulty boiler or pollution is absolute guff.

If you do a test on a smoker, say on 10-15 a day, you'll get a score between say 10-30, if they smoke a great deal it can go even higher (that's parts per million).

If you test non-smokers who cycle on polluted roads, it comes up between 1-2 absolute max, and usually 0 for everyone else.

So- a smoker will test at 24, your non-smoker will test at 0 or 1. What does 1 or even 2 tell you? Nothing, you can't attribute it to living by a busy road at all, because there's a margin of error/picking up tiny amounts for most people, and you are not sitting next to an exhaust pipe inhaling it. Even going in a busy pub in the days of smoking didn't cause it to rise above the non-danger zone.

Inhaling smoke directly into your lungs is not the same as living on a busy road in terms of carbon monoxide inhalation- it is not good for you it may well have some health effects, but it just isn't in the same order of magnitude whatsoever.

As for the faulty boiler gubbins, this is rubbish, because the best place to put a carbon monoxide check is in the rooms near the boiler, there's no point in testing the mother and not, say, other children if their bedroom is near a faulty source. I have never ever found anyone with an alarmingly high reading who genuinely doesn't smoke- it's vanishingly rare and they are actually, as someone else said, offering false reassurance about something for which this monitor is not best designed to test.

This monitor tests whether the individual who is blowing into it has smoked in the past 12/24 hours. That's all, and the rest is misinformation to protect themselves.

A call from the smoking cessation people would strain my marriage in the same way as an accusation of infidelity would - dh is virulently anti-smoking as a completely understandable result of his father dying of smoking-related illness in his early 50s.
I'm not saying he would leave me or anything but he would not respond rationally and it would make things very awkward.

It's ridiculous. Smoking while pregnant might be wrong but at the end of the day it's the women's choice. It's made ovbious that smoking whilst pregnant can cause problems and help is always offered but its the women's choice and if its forced upon them it will cause a lot of negative and ill feelings

'catching them' ?

Why would you want to 'catch' them?

Sod that. Next time I get pregnant I shan't attend the booking in clinic at all.

on the other hand they are catching a lot of smokers

Last time I looked smoking was still legal.
Bad idea, but still legal.

GlaikitFizzog, it's pretty unlikely you'll have a broken boiler that's going to give you high readings and make your MW think you're a liar.

The readings are higher if you live in London than rural, or next to a busy road - but nowhere near as high as a 10-20 a day smoker.
If you don't smoke and live in clean air your reading might get to zero or 1, if you live in a city and don't smoke it might get down to 4 or 5.
The difference in the readings is clear.
If you are a mechanic you know you can can explain a higher reading.

I think people are getting carried away with the boiler story. There might have been an occassion once when someone quit and their reading stayed high and he discovered a faulty boiler.

Patchouli, if I were to get a call from the smoking cessation people I would be livid, absolutely livid. My MW has decided I have lied to her. My trust in her is gone. If I had any problems in my pregnancy I would feel uncomfortable discussing them with her incase she then takes something else I say and twists it.

A man from NICE and a midwife were on The Today programme earlier.

The NICE person said very clearly, that if a woman doesn't want the test, she should just say so. No one will be forced to take it or feel they have to.

I think women need to just say no- if enough do, they'll stop offering it.

If they're really worried about pregnant women having high CO levels due to a faulty boiler, it'd be much better to advise all pregnant women to make sure that they buy a CO monitor, make sure it has working batteries in, and to call a registered gas engineer if the carbon monoxide monitor detects a problem.

And of course a CO test won't be able to tell whether high CO levels are due to smoking, passive or otherwise, a faulty boiler, or living next to a busy road.

The notion that a MW would assume a non-smoker was in fact a lying smoker because of high CO levels is worrying.

But you know if you don't smoke. And get your boiler checked.

It doesn't matter to you if you get a call from the smoking cessation people.
If it were to actually happen that the MW doesn't believe you, you'd be having another test in a while anyway and if you've had the boiler fixed the CO levels will be within normal.

They did it to me at my booking appointment but did not explain why they were doing it or what they were looking for.