AIBU? WWYD? Smoking issue around my baby!

[Champagnelady]

Hello....I am genuinely not trying to aggravate any smokers with this but I don't know how to handle this one.

Firstly, I know I have extreme views on smoking. Both my parents have smoked my whole life - around me and my siblings. It's very much a smoking family. I have never smoked and I never will. I hate smoking even more since my dad passed away specifically from smoking related cancer. It makes me angry that they subjected me and my siblings to inhaling their smoke for years, especially when one sibling had cancer as a child. I don't understand why seeing my dad pass away, horribly, was not enough to scare the living crap out of my mother and make her stop. She knows to some extent how I feel about this but we don't have a relationship where we can be totally honest - she doesn't handle it well.

My husband and I are due our first child in a couple of months. We don't live close enough for my mum to 'pop' in. It's a flight away so when she visits she stays with us. She doesn't smoke in the house - she tries to smoke less when she is here, but inevitably she does still smoke and goes in the garden to do so. I can smell it when she comes in the house and I really don't like it. I think partly, now that everywhere in public is non smoking and I haven't lived at home for many years I probably notice it more. She will of course come to visit when the baby comes.

When we go to see my mum we stay with her. My dad always smoked in the house and smoked a lot more than my mum. Mum smokes outside most of the time, and the house has been decorated from top to bottom. On a recent visit I kept my suitcase closed. I didn't even open it whilst in the house. Yet still, when we left I had to wash everything and leave the case outside for two days because everything smelt of smoke. All the lovely baby things she bought I had to wash to get rid of the smell.

I don't know how to handle this - there is no way on this earth I am staying in that house with my baby if that is how my clothes smell when we come away. It's been 3 years since my dad passed away and still the smoke lingers. I don't want my mum anywhere near the baby when she's had a cigarette. If I can smell it, the baby can breathe it in.

I know my views are extreme and I don't really know how on earth I'm going to tackle this with my mum without feeling like I'm being really mean.
And where do I draw the line? One sibling has a child, and they live close to my mum but my brother smokes (outside his house, not inside) but still...

I'm sorry this is so long but any advice very welcome but please don't tell me to ignore the smoking thing because I just can't.

Thank you!!

Yes but the OP is talking about 3rd hand smoke.

What bugs me is this - people who are against smoking, havin to justify their views Smoking is vile, disgusting and causes cancer (among other things), it does not just cause cancer in the smoker, but others exposed to it. So if people think im precious for wanting people not to smoke around my DC - tough.

for those of you saying there is no evidence that banning smoking has had an effect on children asthma admissions in children and preschoolers have actually reduced by about 20%

Both my parents smoked when I was a child. I hated it, still do. Upon arising, Dad would sit and cough horribly and long, with a cigarette in his hand. He died at 72 of lung cancer. Mom died at 90 of Alzheimer's, could smoking be a cause? She quit smoking decades before she died.

My husband smokes, but not in the house. He smoked in his basement shop and that caused house to be hard to sell. Anyway,

DS and DIL had twins three years ago. I asked DH to change his shirt before holding them, he always did, and always washed hands before holding them. I like the idea of smoking visitors wearing a shirt over clothes when smoking, that they can remove later. Goes without saying that they smoke outside.

3rd hand smoke is still bad though worra

This from wiki
"In October 2011, it was reported that Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana would ban third hand smoke beginning in July 2012, and that employees whose clothing smelled like smoke would not be allowed to work. The ban was ostensibly enacted because third hand smoke allegedly poses a special danger for the developing brains of infants and small children.[9]"

I'm an ex smoker - and used to think that having a polo and spraying a big of perfume was plenty to mask all the evidence. You just can't smell it on yourself wondered why my DM could always tell when I'd had crafty fag or in your house.

I watched something ages ago (Panorama / C4?) about Alder Hey and am sure the advice was if you have a fag (even outside) you have to shower and change your clothes before you hold a small baby because the lingering smoke / toxins can damage the hairs in the ear (leading to glue ear) and in the nose. I've tried to google it but can't find a link - I did find this 30 odd page research document about second hand smoke / passive smoking (SHS) done in Liverpool.

www.liv.ac.uk/haccru/reports/HaCCRU%20Alder%20Hey%20SHS%20Intervention%20Report%20120.pdf

Sorry I don't know how to link simply.

The thing is though if your DM isn't going to hold your baby every day I'm not sure how strict you'd have to be or how much damage can be done on the odd visit. It's your call, obviously - I'd probably stay in a B&B though if the house still smells because I've turned into a bastard judgy ex-smoker. Talk to your MW? Research shows they should have been trained to discuss risks.

worra just to be on the safe side, everyone who has ever smoked a cigarette in their lives should be immediatley disinfected, hair shaved, and wear a bell around their neck, less they inflict 3rd hand smoke on any PFB.

I wouldn't let a smoker go anywhere near my baby.

My next door neighbour (now dead from lung cancer) was a smoker and when she came to see me after I'd had my first & asked to hold him, I just said 'sorry, no because you stink smoke'. No huge deal.

Thankfully, no one else we knew then was a smoker.

MamaMumra you saw the word 'allegedly' in that didn't you?

Please clarify.

Anyone who smokes, even if they last had a smoke say 6 hours ago, or yesterday is not allowed near your baby?

any smoker?

What about smokers who gave up yesterday? Are they allowed near the baby or is there still some 3rd smoke residue attached to them?

MamaMumra god that's a bit full on! I live in London too but must surround myself with other dirty smokers lol. Smokers are in the majority where I work but it is a young company and I do think more people in their 20s and early 30s smoke than older people now as I guess most people give up after a certain age now.

worra I completely disregarded that word thank you very much
kelly maybe an age thing you are right - in my 20s we were puffing away all the time, maybe all the mums hide it like I used too

I became more conscious of how my smoke bothered other people and that I always felt in a minority as a smoker.

MamaMumra to be fair we all hide it from our kids so maybe that's the start of becoming a covert/guilty smoker when you become a mum

OP - I think you have a valid point and aren't BU.

A couple of points: IME the only way your mum will get rid of the smell in her house is to get new carpets - we bought a place from a smoker & that was the case with us. The baby clothes she bought you had presumably been hanging around in her house - I don't think your clothes will smell from being in the suitcase there for a few days. It sounds as if she's doing what she can, apart from stopping smoking, so just put up with it for the sake of your baby's relationship with her.

Re giving up - maybe she doesn't want to give up because it's a crutch that she 'needs', to the point that she can't face being without it. It is possible to give up but it's bloody hard. I gave up 20 years ago and have only had one cig since (more than 10 yrs ago). But it was bloody difficult. Last week someone left a fag packet with one in it in my shop. I had to break it into pieces before I chucked it away so that I wouldn't be tempted and the next day had to resist going through the bin and fish the smokable bit out That's addiction for you.

Op you should make your mum a contamination pod, would be funny!

Your missing the point that some people due to their upbringing have an almost pathological hatred or aversion to smoking. That's one of the reasons that some people feel the way they do, I loved my mum but consider us having to live with her chain smoking a form of abuse. If any of my children ever took up smoking it would break my heart.

Hownoo that's fine. But 'almost pathological' doesn't mean rational. The reverse. The Wiki article is just the sort of 'science' that I'm talking about. I'm just trying to introduce a sense of proportion. A child gets wheezy - many, many more than when people smoked everywhere - and granny's cardie gets the blame, no matter that you've been pushing the buggy up and down the road at exhaust pipe level and you can see the smog over the skyline at sunset

There's enough neurosis connected with pregnancy and childrearing these days without being alarmist about 3rd hand smoke. I want a proper evaluation of cause and effect and consequent risk, not an 'after this means because of this' jumping to conclusions without consideration of all the variables. At the moment, there's something about the debate that has more in common with witch-hunts and scape-goating than proper science.

PickledThePottyMouth - as long as I can put her in there when she is driving me nuts !

It's not unreasonable to ask a smoker to smoke outside, wear a coat and some kind of head covering which they can remove when they come indoors, and wash hands and brush teeth before holding baby. I used to do all these things after a smoking a fag when DS was a baby.

I would like to add though - I had a friend in my youth who refused to take her baby to visit ILS because of the strong smell of curry in the house, and she claimed their clothes would smell when they got home . So it's worth establishing what actually constitutes a serious health risk and what is just unpleasantly smelly.

There are as many toxins in smoke from an open fire or a bonfire as there are from fag smoke, according to my environmental scientist (and passionately anti-smoking) DB. You also expose your children to a huge amount of pollution INSIDE a car (WHY are people so utterly unwilling to accept this? ), and from traffic fumes as pedestrians.

Our kids are exposed to far fewer environmental hazards nowadays than we were 40 years ago. Smoke from coal fires, asbestos, lead in paint, smog, crap chemicals in food, untested drugs, the ever present risk of dying from gas fumes........

Champagne

Give your mum a chance to love her grandchild, hold her and coo over her. She smoked when you were a baby. Do you have any health problems because of it?

Get her some patches, an electronic ciggie, hypnotherapy etc but do not cut off her contact with her grandchild because she smokes.

You will need her help when you haven't slept for days and seeing double and your boobs are red raw and you wished you had got a fecking kitten instead.

Her fags will seem a tiny little problem.

Redrubyshoes - The fags will never be a tiny problem to me - they are the reason my baby will never know my dad and that makes me so sad.
Hownowbrowncow - I totally agree.

My father died from a smoking related cancer as well. Give your Mum a chance.

So now it's also 'some kind of head covering'! I was joking about the SoC suit.

Now I'm seeing this poor woman with a paper bag over her head and a cigarette sticking out of a hole in the front.

Arf at Thymeout! I used to tie an old towel around my (very long) hair and pretend to my nosy neighbours that I'd just stepped out after having a shower. Or I'd stuff my locks into one of DPs old beanie hats. Fags make yer hair REALLY honk.

I was not an "out and proud smoker" .

I have quite a few mates who have lost parents in car accidents, house fires due to being old hippies who burn candles/incense, exposure to radiation after working in the nuclear industry, industrial accidents (falling off ladders/roof) etc.

Or suicide . That's a choice as well.

Just saying.