How to protect my baby from smoking

[Tombo80]

After a night sleeping on the sofa, my wife has gone off the hook crazy about the issue of smoking! Please can someone tell me if I deserve this!

Our first baby is due in mid May and despite my father chain smoking 50 a day around me and my 4 sisters i am determined that my little bear will not come into contact with any cigarette smoke, but what I thought were reasonable precautions are apparently not acceptable. This is the situation;

We live in the frozen moores of saddleworth.
The house was built in 1912 with an old detached outside privy opposite the front door.
About 10 years ago the previous owners put a plastic glazed lean-to to join the house to the toilet. The exterior grade door to the house still exists.
I smoke in this lean-to, but agree that I will have to modify this when the baby comes.

I have agreed that I will have to smoke outside during the day, when the baby is awake, and when the weather is not extreme (as it so often is up here). Bearing in mind the starting point is that the baby should never come into contact with my smoking, i thought that smoking in this lean to room, with the exterior grade door closed, when it is raining and sub zero and the baby was in bed was not going to be a problem.... but apparently i am the worst human ever!

My wife has been a real trooper and is normally so calm, but this has really got her mad. What do you guys think? Please help, because I don't want to be on the sofa again tonight!

Just quit.
It's actually not difficult. Nicotine is not really addictive.
There are no physical withdrawal symptoms, all the craving comes from the false idea that you a giving up something valuable.
You are not. It is not valuable.
Well, it's valuable to the tobacco companies of course.
I didn't even gain weight. Remain a size 8-10.

And yes, smoking isn't just about the lungs.
Stop smoking and you significantly reduce your risks of heart disease and osteoporosis.
Stop smoking and you no longer have to be unwrapping your cigarette packet or rolling a cigarette as your aeroplane lands when you go on holiday, desperately waiting for the moment when you a outside the airport so you can light up. You just actually get on with real life rather than thinking about when you can have the next cigarette.
I have saved a fortune in chewing gum since stopping smoking.

I disagree with theRealAmandaClarke; giving up can be very difficult for some people. OP you were able to do it before and surely you now have a better incentive/motivation? Wouldn't it be easier to give up now before the baby comes? I'd imagine a new born is challenge enough and you need to be available to your wife and child, rather than outside/changing/showering.

As an anecdote, I met a woman last week who was deaf in both ears. She explained it was as a result of glue ear caused by her father's smoking when she was a child.

BIL is so happy to have his two DC - he would literally do anything for them, he loves them so much.

He hasn't given up smoking, though.

I have no idea whether the OP is still lurking, but many other people might

My mother's lungs are perfect. They absolutely are. Sometimes it's the luck of the draw and you just get lucky, you know?
WilsonFrickott, you are absolutely right - there seem to be some lucky people who are not susceptible to the toxic effects of tobacco consumption. It's probably some genetic mutation that is not known yet (therefore you cannot be tested for it and nobody can predict who may be amongst the lucky). It is because of this that everybody knows somebody who smoked 60 a day and lived to 105 .
They will still have spent a fortune on cigarettes, stunk to high heavens and will have been under pressure to make sure they always had that next cigarette to feed their habit.
And for every one of them, there's many, many more who become ill and who die prematurely due to their smoking.

Also one other point: because lung disease if obviously the most common problem for smokers, followed by premature heart disease and stroke, many other health problems end up not really mentioned.
Breast cancer is more common in smokers.
As is bladder cancer.
As are head and neck cancers such as cancer of the tongue and mouth.
Wound healing problem are a huge issue for smokers which is why a woman I know is unable to get her breast reconstructed after breast ca surgery because her original wound has not healed yet. 6 months down the line.
.

There is really not one single reason to continue smoking.

Re the 'easy' or 'difficult' big: I found the analogy of the 'low hanging fruit' really fitting.
Those who find it easy usually just go off and stop, with or without a bit of help with NRT.
Those who find it difficult need to just keep on trying because it can be done and it is NEVER to late to get benefit from stopping smoking.

Here endeth the public service announcement sermon

Pacific - I totally agree, but I think part of Wilson's point was that even her mother, who got lucky on her lungs, wrecked her tastebuds and so salt is killing her. So smoking is still doing awful, awful things to her health. I think you were on the same page.

Oh, whoops, you were actually agreeing with Wilson Pacific. Sorry, early, need more coffee....

ok. i can see that my post about it being easy for me looks a bit smug.

I know it's really hard for some people. I had many attempts to quit before my successful one.
but that's because i falsley believed i was giving somethiong up.
When i realised (thank God for Allen Carr) that all i was giving up was my addiction to nicotine it made all the difference.
It's an addiction but the actual nicotine craving only lasts a few days.
The rest is all about feeling that you're depriving yourself.
You're not depriving yourself.

and i agree that it's never too late to benefit from quitting smoking.

YY to wound healing Pacific - another thing my DM has terrible problems with and of course thanks to the osteoperosis (which is there because she smokes) she has a lot of wounds to deal with.

I asked her if I could buy her an ecig for her birthday and she said 'och no, why would I want to replace one crutch for another?'

Erm, because the other crutch won't kill you?

My DM is in her early 60s by the way - she has the health and life of an old lady...

oohdaddypig the evidence has been around for years and yes, lots of people are still ignoring it.

itsbetterthanabox nothing really. I just got into a discussion about the attitudes towards nicotine addiction v food addiction.

The latter tends to make people empathetic and search for emotional reasons etc, whereas the former tends to bring out scorn and a simple 'just quit' attitude

'I mean, me and my sisters would sit in a car for 36 hours on a drive down to spain with my dad puffing away constantly.... It didn't seem to do us any damage,'

With all due courtesy you have NO IDEA how much damage it has caused. Do you know anything about the development of cancer? Are you aware that it could be lurking like a time bomb in your cells?

I am surprised you haven't considered this.

I found it a total bugger to give it up - after I dont know how many attempts I succeeded in March last year..so I'll celebrate my first year anniversary with a cig haha not really. Like I said earlier I had to go cold turkey (maybe I have a masochistic streak!) but the thing that helped was that I didnt make a big song and dance about it and really just took it one day at a time. I've smoked for years (not going to tell you how many but since I was 15) and I fucking loved it! All the rituals, from coming in from work and having a glass of wine and a cig to the actual rolling up. I even miss standing outside with those sad groups of people having a puff and a chat. Its about the only time I ever stopped rushing about and socialised!

Stinkyfaghands - that is sooo perfect - now I love being 'clean'. I went to have my fringe cut the other day and the hairdresser must have just nipped out for one because he had the worst stinkyfaghands. I had to ask him to go and wash them!

My dc are grown up now but they are dead proud of their ma for getting this far. None of them smoke and they all say how much nicer it is coming back from pubs/clubs without clothes/hair etc stinking.

Wish me luck keeping on the straight and narrow. Tombo if I can do it you can. It will be really brilliant I promise you.

I say just quit because smoking isn't the same as overeating.
There are similarities but stopping overeating is very different from stopping smoking.
Partly because we need food and we don't need tobacco.
It's the false belief that smoking offers a valid source of comfort that keeps many people who have real stresses from the genuine value of quitting. It's not a real crutch. Smoking only serves to feed the nicotine habit. It doesn't numb the pain or dull the senses or lift the mood.
It just makes us sick, makes our children sick and takes our money.

You're not depriving yourself.
This is very true.
I gave up after a few relapses about ten years ago. and I feel like I have been released from a trap. I consider myself a non-smoker.
My x OTOH always considers himself a smoker who is currently not allowing himself to smoke when he quits. And he slides back into it.

I don't know how you get from one mind set to the other.

I read AC too and I think some of it did slowly sink in (although it really irritated me).

I think the idea that your are stopping not 'giving up' is key.
and that smoking is not inherently enjoyable, what you are enjoying is having the stress, caused by your addiction, relieved, briefly.

The best think you can do if you genuinely want to protect your child from smokers is to not be one yourself. The evidence shows that children of smokers are more likely to take up smoking themselves at some point. Hardly suprising really as children tend to be led by example rather than by what they are told to do/ not do.

I do have one acquaintance who went to great lengths to try to hide from her children the fact that she smoked. Which seems worse to me, because children are clever little buggers who tend to suss things out, and worse than them knowing you're a smoker, is knowing you're a smoker who pretends not to be.

My dad hid his smoking from me for most of my life. I saw him twice a week and he only smoked in his room. I worked it out when I was a teenager though. I smoked because my friends did as a teen but gave up in my late teens and don't smoke now.
My dad now has a ecigarette and loves it! He hasn't smoked a real one in 2 years.

I stopped smoking 8 years ago. I am a bit of a health nut these days, but even as a smoker I ran the London Marathon, so I may not be typical.

I quit after reading the Allen Carr book. It doesn't work for everyone, but for me changing the way I viewed smoking was the key. The book helped to view quitting as liberating rather than sacrificing.