to smoke...?

[rdmommy]

i have always smoked except when pregnant and breast feeding. I don't smoke around my dc and only after they have gone for a nap and after they have gone to bed. I smoke outside in the garden.

I really feel like an unfit mother in the eyes of some mumsnetters!

She's doing ok!
She and my dad have just got divorced - hugely stressful after over 35 years of marriage - but she didn't even have a single puff. I am very proud of her
Unfortunately she has a lot of other serious health problems to contend with; still, NOT having COPD has got to be a good thing, right?

I don't think there is some ethical need to live until your child is 30 or 40 or whatever. If there was such an ethical need and we assume that the person who said the average cut in life expectancy of a smoker is 8 years is correct, then a woman who got pregnant at 20 and smoked would, on average, be alive for 12 years more of her child's life than a mother who go pregnant at 40. Yet nobody would dare say to a 40 year old pregnant woman, do you want your children to have to stand weeping over your grave? And rightly so, because it is disgusting to say so. But both smoking and late pregnancy are choices.

Of course smoking is bad for you and those around you, but there is an awful lot of hysteria around smoking, and I do think the purpose of that is not to get smokers to stop. I think the purpose of it is to deflect non-smokers from thinking about their own lifestyle choices and the implications they have for both themselves and those around them. It is always easier to point the finger at someone else.

That's good to hear, fairycake

MillyR- exactly. I think the average cut is 3-8 years depending how much and how long you've smoked for.

Anyhow- anyone had a look at my linky at 18:06? Biggest study ever done re childhood and workplace/spousal exposure to tobacco. Quite interesting, especially for the rabid anti smokers here. Some WHO data out there in the spirit of that study, as well, but am too tired to google now.

Yes, I don't feel that my mother has a duty to me to have a very healthy lifestyle . I mean, I would be sad if she passed away before she's older, but then it's her life now, isn't it?

OP. you might also find this life expectancy calculator interesting. I have been putting in different variables, and the life expectancy of a smoker who exercises is 1 year longer than a non-smoker who doesn't, and a smoker who has a healthy diet and exercises is expected to live 7 years longer than a non-smoker who doesn't.

So YABU to smoke, but not it seems as unreasonable as people who eat fatty food and don't exercise every day. If you cannot stop smoking, try and make every other factor in your life as healthy as possible.

www.uwic.ac.uk/shss/dom/newweb/Lifestyle/age_expectancy2.htm

Yes, I did yesterday and had 82, but redid it now and it seems it's 87- versus 92 if I have never smoked.

But, yes, smoking can be one of the contributing, not the causative, factors of getting cancer. There's plenty of others: genetics, food you eat, how much exercise you get etc etc.

did it

Health and longevity aside, still not a nice thought a child cuddling, kissing a stinking ashtray

I think focusing on life expectancy detracts from the fact that as a smoker you are far more likely to experience significant diseases. They might not necessarily kill you earlier but they can make you significantly unwell and reduce your quality of life.

Smokers are significantly more likely to have:

-heart disease
-COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
-cancers of the mouth, throat, nose, larynx, oesophagus, pancreas, bladder, cervix and kidney
-peripheral vascular disease
-stroke
-aneurysm
-impotence
-macular degeneration
-gum disease
-osteoporosis

So none of those will necessarily kill you but having them would make life bloody miserable.

10 days today!!!
!!!
[hgrin]

Well done ginny!!

Keep going [hgrin]

Hmmm...I'm still curious to know what smokers say to their children if they discover said child/children had taken up the habit themselves?
I can't remember what my parents said to my brother... but whatever it was, it didn't work.
Being surrounded by the smell of it most of the time (and having people think that I smoked because my clothes smelt of it, when I didn't, it was because everyone else in the house did)
was quite enough to put me off!

I don't think you are being unreasonable, DP smokes but only after kids are in bed and only in the garden so maybe 2-3 most a day.

In terms of being unfit parent, i'd focus on the "fit" part but it is no different from me carrying a couple of stone excess weight (honestly its still baby weight) and getting out of breath running around park with dd's!

That is something DP and I have agreed to sort out, he'll stop the smoking if I lose the weight!

But, what I can't understand is the stopping for 9 months + then starting again. My mum stopped for 5 pregnancies and my SIL stopped for 9 months, had Dneice then started again, stopped again when she fell pregnant within 3 months and has said she will start again once DC2 arrives!

I stopped when pg with ds 1 and started again 4 years later after I had ds2!
My reason was that I didn't stop for myself, it was for the babies sake, so once I started to get my life back and went back to work and started socialising again it felt natural to go back to the fags.
This time I am doing it because I want to for myself. I hate the smell, hate the way it makes me feel and most of all hate the amount of money it costs. If you aren't ready to stop completely you just won't, even if you know what its doing to you. Its like an alcoholic won't stop drinking for anyone else, they will only do it when they hit rock bottom.

I think smokers definitely don't get the support they need when they're ready to stop.
I don't like it and I wish with all my heart that my parents would stop...but at the end of the day, it's up to them.
I know SOMETHING will get all of us in the end - even if it's purely old age - but I just don't like thinking about my parents not being around anymore!!

My parents smoked, 20 a day each, as children we hated it, hid their cigarettes etc. No matter how many mints you suck or perfume you spray you can still smell it on your clothes and skin.

My Mum gave up, then had a routine mammogram that detected she had breast cancer, but it was a secondary cancer. Primary was lung cancer, it had already spread to her brain and her legs.

SHE HAD NO SYMPTOMS, no cough, no pain, nothing. She had 2 rounds of chemo but sadly she died 10 weeks after being diagnosed. She was 62, healthy in lots of other ways, on the wii fit her wii fit age was 30.

If you saw someone going through chemo I wonder if you in turn would want to put your children through that experience of watching you hooked up to drugs to try to save you from something self inflicted.

It doesn't matter about life expectancy, maybe the final years are you fighting to breathe and watching your family being tortured by your pain.

It is still very raw for me, my Mum died just 8 months ago.

' I think smokers definitely don't get the support they need when they're ready to stop.'
What! Really! You get patches on the Nhs. There's a helpline number on tv. There are give up smoking schemes you can join at doctors surgeries, what more do you want! Someone to tape your gob up?
I went to the doctor and asked for help to stop over eating. Guess what help I got.. 'stop putting food in your mouth'! Useful!

YANBU - all those people quoting stuff about lung cancer, I'm fairly sure it is about 5% of smokers who develop lung cancer. Much higher than the general population but certainly not an automatic death sentence for all smokers. I smoke a bit, not every day but I do smoke. I probably get through a pack of 20 every 5-6 weeks or so. I tend to smoke a few on a night out then don't smoke for the rest of the week so I guess I'm a social smoker. I know there are health risks. I don't smoke around non smokers so no passive smoking risk. The health risks are mine and I don't want to quit. If that makes me selfish so be it. I like the taste of a cigarette. If I get judged for that then oh well. We live in a very judgemental society and I'm fairly sure I get judged on my clothes/music etc as well. Can't say it really bothers me what strangers think of me. Why would anyone care what some randomer on the street thought of them? Unless you are around your kids when you are smoking then smoking has absolutely no influence on how good a parent you are.

Somewhere around 15% I think, compared with 1.5% of non-smokers.

Obviously that's just yer actual lung cancer, not all smoking caused/related mortality.

I agree that the odd fag on a night out probably won't finish you off, but I was also a social smoker (heavier than you - probably a packet a week), & in my early 30s I did develop a horrible hacking morning cough, & my asthma dramatically worsened.

I got pg with ds, quit smoking - cough & wheezing disappeared.

Just might be worth bearing in mind - it's not just the high consequence risks like lung cancer, it's also the low level stuff that makes every cold take 3x as long to shift, iykwim.

YANBU. OP you are a smoker. You are doing everything you can to protect your DCs from your habit. If you want to give up, try, try and try again, if you want it's ok. Smoking has a negative impact on health, so does guilt. So if you are going to smoke, do so, guilt free.

I think like everyone, people who frown on smoking parents the loudest are those who have never smoked.
If you want to quit, do so, if you do not want to quit, you probably won't regardless of how much people advice/lecture/frown.

Confusing post, the 'like everyone' wasn't meant to be there, can't remember what I originally planned on saying and forgot :o.
Baby brain.