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!

Tombo you are completely deluded to the damage that your parents has caused- they have done the riskiest thing of all because they have passed their habit onto you! So your dad has COPD- what makes you think you won't get that?

The effects of smoking happen 30/40/50 years down the line and unfortunately even quitting then won't necessarily save you from them.

You are right, sitting in the car may not have a huge effect(although it does have some effect on babies due to respiratory systems) but what they have done is pass on their habit and now you are so desperate to remain a smoker you are then modelling it to your child to be.

As for seeing people in social housing who don't take precautions- if you mean women who smoke in pregnancy, they are more likely to have a low birth weight baby. The baby won't look any different to anyone else's baby but long term down the line, lbw babies are more likely to have a heart attack, for example.

You don't sound very clued up about the risks of smoking around a baby- there's a lot of literature out there on it. But remember the biggest risk is that you pass on the habit itself, that you model it, that you teach your child it's ok to smoke- because then you are passing on a habit which is likely to lead to a 1 in 2 risk of premature death.

Everyone goes on about e-cigs, I think that would be a good solution for you.

From livescience.com

Rarely are simple messages heard, such as the fact that about half of all smokers will die from smoking, and of these, about half will die before or around age 50. These numbers come from a landmark 50-year study of physicians in England, initiated in 1951.

Now that seems scared to me.

Your wife doesn't believe you about the "I'll go in the shed" business. What happens if she can't care for the child? You'll be parenting from the shed? And we both know that sooner or later it will de-generate into "I'll just smoke outside on the step... I'll just smoke whilst I'm standing in the doorway... I'll just smoke in the kitchen with the window open..."

If you want to prioritise your addiction over your daughter's health, that's your choice. It's going to have severe effects on your family life, again your choice.

My father quit smoking when he had kids.

Bertie - good god I never made the connection between car sickness and smoking. All four of us kids used to chuck our guts up on car journeys, even a 10 min one, never even made the link with the smoke fog in vehicle.

You're looking for excuses and justifications to carry on.

Your wife is right (did she used to smoke? Because otherwise I will never understand how a non-smoker can marry a smoker).

It is a dirty, filthy, expensive, life-limiting, smell, foul habit. (can you tell that I hate it?)

Why would you even consider for one second carrying on when you are about to have a child - you want them to copy you? - especially when you have quit before.

My mother died in her early 50s from emphysema, my DB gave up years ago and also has the disease. Many of my and my DH family died from smoking related diseases. It matters not a jot to me that my father was in his 70s. Cancer is a hideous way to die at any age and if it was preventable (and his was)...

You say your father has COPD. Is it emphysema? Does he have to have oxygen permanently available yet? Have you seen what happens to people with it in its latter stages?

Sorry for the rant, but I will never understand supposedly rational people doing this to themselves and people they purport to love.

My children never knew either of their grandmothers. My DH never knew my mother. She died over 35 years ago, and typing this now is upsetting me.

Your wife is right. There are so many options out there now to help you stop that it is the height of selfishness for you to even consider ways that you can continue.

Stop. Thousands do and there isn't a single downside to doing so.

Just think on that one question if nothing else-
For you to be an equal parent to your child, you have to be able to look after your child by yourself without your wife there to help you.

How will you manage your smoking then?

Or do you expect your wife to always be there?

And yes, some parents do smoke and their kids don't die of SIDS but some do. a very tiny number statistically but here you are weighing up a small risk against an enormous consequence. a consequences that would surely want to do everything to avoid.

My cleaners sometimes have a fag outside my front door before they start work. I can smell they are there before they knock on the door as the smoke smell seeps into the house even with the front door closed.

You need to smoke outside, far away from the house if you really must smoke.

My DF used to smoke when we were kids. Never in the house as my mother wouldn't allow it. But if we visited friends or family my dad would hae the odd cig with them.

Now , he eats well. A healthy diet. Had mainly physically active jobs. Ok he spent a lot of time in a lorry or a van but also had to do lots of lifting boxes on and off etc.

He had a heart attack having barely turned 50. Despite having quit smoking at that point.

Oh and I was a very chesty child lived off cough syrup. My little brother was a sickly baby. Now my mum never smoked but she's asthmatic and these days very badly so. And my brother and I were both two weeks early and 5lb something babies.

So, every chance that it affected us as babies despite my DF taking all the precautions.

If you have any sort of outside shelter then use that to smoke under. I go outside to smoke even in minus temperatures, I just have a couple of old heavy coats that I put on just for smoking at home. You can keep a big jumper or something to wear over your clothes so that smoke clings to it instead of what you are wearing underneath and just take it off and wash your hands when you get in.

When it's raining horizontally and the tiny little bit of covered shelter we have doesn't work I stand at the back door and shut all the internal doors. It happens very infrequently and I'm outside as much as possible without getting soaked, so it's fine. My dc are now very healthy teenagers.

some smoking info for you

The bit that stands out to me is that half of all smokers will die of a smoking related illness. You have a 50/50 chance of smoking killling you. That's not good odds.

You should start your propesed regime now.

Go outside away from the house everytime you want to smoke or in lean to if weather is vile.
Change you outer clothes and wash your hands and brush your teeth when you come in.
Then wait 20 minutes.

(i hope you do not smoke anywhere you pg wife anyway)

Get a timer. Start the timer when you head out for your fag. stop it once the twenty minutes have elapsed. add it all up over a week...and then work out how you are going to make all that time up to your wife.

Also when the baby is asleep in the evening don't know where you ordered your baby from but they don't all come with an evening off switch built in...or even a knowledge that it is evening

On a second read, I think this MUST be a reverse thread. Some fed-up wife posted it in order to show the responses to her selfish husband.

Oh and who is feeding the baby? Do you plan on leaving a hungry baby screaming while you have a shower first?

How do you kids your toddlers head better and give them a cuddle when they fall over if you can't go near then till you shower and change?

What happens when he's dangling out the high chairs free you nip out when he's eating?

If you don't quit now you are going to be dealing with the stress if a baby on too of the stress if having not had a cig fir a few hours.

Why is smoking more important to you than yours and your DC's health?
Smoking increases the risk of stroke, copd, angina, emphysema and other types of cancer not just lung. You say that you quit before - why can't you do it again? If you continue to smoke after reading all of these replies you are a selfish fool.

You can keep a big jumper or something to wear over your clothes so that smoke clings to it instead of what you are wearing underneath and just take it off and wash your hands when you get in.

Are you kidding? That really, really doesn't stop you stinking of it. It gets in your hair, your breath, your fingers. Wearing a jumper and washing your hands doesn't even touch the surface.

Health risks due to passive smoking

The info is out there.
If you are looking for justification to carry on smoking the 'it did us know harm' is a very useful phrase .

You say your father has COPD now - have you actually witnessed anybody with end stage COPD taking weeks and months to gasp their last?
I am sorry to be blunt, but 'it has not done us any harm' is such bullshit: it has.
You are a smoker which is more likely for children of smokers.
You have a father with a progressive chronic illness.
I have no idea how much money your parents spent on cigarettes that they could not spend on their kids or niceties in life

Smoking is harmful in every bloody respect. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
Of course a baby will not drop dead from having been close to a smoker once, but the risks of heath problems increase.

We all chose which risks we find acceptable - make a bloody choice.

If you have any sort of outside shelter then use that to smoke under. I go outside to smoke even in minus temperatures, I just have a couple of old heavy coats that I put on just for smoking at home. You can keep a big jumper or something to wear over your clothes so that smoke clings to it instead of what you are wearing underneath and just take it off and wash your hands when you get in.

You can tell this was written by a smoker.

If you think you don't smell to a non-smoker, you are sadly delusional.

And it must be even worse for a baby or small child.

You say your father has COPD now - have you actually witnessed anybody with end stage COPD taking weeks and months to gasp their last?

Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Sorry Matilda, this really is the selfish one!

Sorry to hear about cousin pigsmummy, i really hope he wins the fight. X x

I showed this thread to my wife, not the other way around and could hear her laughing from downstairs..... I get it y'all. Smoke outside if you can't quit.... Although I think the clothes changing, 20min timer is a bridge too far.

Either way, we have kissed and made up, so main the main objective of the post is complete!

Thank you all again..... Mr (trying to be better) selfish swine. X

Do you want your child to be a smoker when they are older?
Chances are they will be- children of smokers are more likely to be smokers themselves.
Do you want to see your grandchildren?
You probably won't live to see them, as smokers die earlier than non-smokers.

Nor me, Nanny0gg

End stage COPD is horrific to see and hear.

I get it y'all. Smoke outside if you can't quit.... Although I think the clothes changing, 20min timer is a bridge too far

You obviously don't get it.

So are you gonna quit or not?

Because it sounds like you think it's all hillocks and it's ok cos you made up now