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!

Worra I think it's the op's lack of acceptance that he could damage his babys health as well as his own and the flippant attitude of 'it didn't do me any harm' that is causing lack of empathy

Because it's harder when food is a necessity. You can't just stop eating.

There's gum, patches, pills , e-cigs, groups and meetings.

There's help for smoking everywhere. He's just being selfish.

I don't think anybody implied that stopping smoking is 'easy', but it's everybody's own decision whether to continue smoking or even try to stop.
And as I said there's nothing wrong with having to try more than once - as long as you learn from your previous failed attempts.
And not keep saying "I tried patches/chewing gum/Champix/e-cigs or whatever and they didn't work" - no, your head was not quite in the right place to allow them to help enough for you to stop.
Not you personally, worra . People in general - the ones who stop successfully and forever were in the right place in their lives and in their heads when they started their successful quit.

You can't be serious. Overeating doesn't give other people cancer, COPD, asthma.

Nicotine addiction really does make people ca-razy.

Imagine if your wife smoked, how would you feel if she smoked while pregnant? I think you need to make some sacrifices too!
Why not switch to ecigarettes?

Lovely weather we are having today OP.

Now, Exit, that's just mean

"Hey, thanks for all your comments, that's me told..... but I don't believe it's all that dangerous, it never did me any harm"

It seems to have harmed your brain quite a bit.

Though I have never seen any research to suggest that smoking makes people stupid.

Actually I'm sure I read that smoking can cause increased risk of things like ADHD.

Obviously that's not "stupidity" far from it but it can affect basic brain function.

Happy to be proved wrong though.

Worra, partly because you can't stop eating altogether, the way you can stop smoking or drinking alcohol. To stop binge eating, you need to change your attitude to food, identify triggering situations, danger foods etc. you may need to work out for the first time in your life what constitutes 'normal' eating. It's a sliding scale, but you have to keep dealing with your 'drug', you can't simply stop. Also, there is no binge eating equivalent of passive smoking - other than learning unhealthy attitudes to food, you can't be harmed by being in the vicinity as you can from smoking.

I've seen family members quit smoking and am under no illusions that it's easy, but it's in no way equivalent to binge eating in terms of potential harm to others.

smokers are pretty adept at kidding themselves.

I know quite a few who smoke '10-15 a day' who actually smoke more like 25-30.

Or 'social smokers' who smoke a pack a day.

Or smokers who 'always smoke outside at home' but actually just stick their head out of a window.

Sorry, cross-posted with everyone.

Worral - your post is antagonistic. Smoking and binge eating aren't comparable in terms of harm done to others.

There is an enormous amount of support out their for smokers to quit. The OP is too arrogant to think he needs it.

Smoking makes me so cross. My friend spends 3000 a year on a habit which is killing her, is hugely harmful to her kids and then can't find the cash to go on holiday.

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, which is why i find it difficult to reconcile the catastrophic circumstances of not having a shower and changing my clothes vs what I grew up with. I also work in social housing and see people with very healthy babies who take no precautions at all during and after pregnancy, how can this be?

You probably were not using seatbelts let alone car seats either but are you planning to let your baby roll around on journeys ? Accidents are, fortunately rarely fatal for infants, but that doesn't stop the vast majority taking the precautionary action of using child restraints and not overloading cars. Why would you deliberately expose your baby to the risk of passive smoking although changing clothes is a bit extreme. Maybe she just wants to make the point that you should given up, full stop.

OP I buried both my parents before I was 20 due to the effects of their smoking. They were only in their 40's. I had to listen to the sound of the soul hiting the coffin lid, pay the undertakers, call all the insurance companies etc. The after effects have fucked up my life for decades.

But you know, you go ahead and kill yourself by smoking, I'm sure your kids will be just peachy fine with that...

Hello....I am the wife!

Don't really want to air my complete dirty linen in public but did want to say thank you for your comments.

I really hope Tombo does quit, but get that he is an addict and it won't be easy. He is being selfish, yes. He is deluded about the impact his smoking will have on us all. He has also seriously under-played the use of the 'lean-to' which is in fact our sun room, we use it for eating in and sitting in during the warmer months and it is also the room through which we leave and enter the house. So him smoking in there was never an option and I have been angry and upset that we even had to have a row about it. I couldn't believe it really. He now agrees he will have to smoke outside but i am worried about his flippancy re smoke clinging etc.

I am a non-smoker, for those that were interested.

He has bought an e-cig which he puffs on now and then when he doesn't want to go into the freezing cold sun room to smoke. Which is where I have asked him to smoke since I got pregnant. Prior to that he smoked anywhere downstairs. I expect to be called a mug for this. But it is his house too and he smoked when I met him.

I hope i am not being too naive in thinking that when our daughter is born he will naturally become less of an arsehole re this matter! Surely you just become less selfish when you become a parent and accept that sacrifices have to be made......? Despite how he comes across on this thread, he is a lovely man who I know will be an excellent dad.

Oh, and yes, I was laughing when he showed me the early messages because I was happy to show him I'm not an unreasonable cow, and he looked so sheepish.

To paraphrase the OP, it is a shame that anything is "a bridge too far" for your child.

So sad.

My DH smoked. A lot. He quit when we moved in together and had children. Hand on heart, if he started smoking again I would divorce him.

I love DH, but my children rely on me to keep them as safe and healthy as possible.

Mil started smoking again after quitting for 6 years. I sympathise, because she started when her dad got sick and died. Our children are no longer allowed to visit her house because she smokes inside. She thinks an open window and a squirt of body spray sorts it out. She smells so bad, when she visits, the room smells of her for hours after she's left. It's disgusting.

Put your child first.

Sorry, areseholes rarely stop being arseholes.

Lollywig

Good luck with the rest of your pregnancy.

Maybe we've helped to sow a seed...

My dad started smoking at 11.
he stopped at 55, when his smoking caused the death of my non-smoking mum
it wasn't easy, but he did it
if you want to, then you can
just seems such a shame that you would put your own needs first, before those of your unborn child

I'd be tempted to just ignore it. You'll get a chain of letters over about a 4 month period and then they'll stop.

Even allowing for changes in law I don't like ECP pursue non payers as its not financially worth their while.

sorry - wrong thread

We went to see family yesterday.

We spent two hours in their house. Male is a smoker. He did not smoke while we were there, other than out of their kitchen window.

The living room window was open all the time.

We have to put all our clothes in the wash. We stink.

As a smoker, your dp does not realize how bad the smell is, and how it lingers.

Lollywig glad you saw this thread. I think the thing that irritated me about your husband's posts is that he's terribly flippant and in denial about the harm, when his own dad has a smoking related disease which is terrible and likely to kill him sooner than otherwise.

I think if he'd come on and said- I want to quit now I'm going to be a dad, he would have had a more sympathetic hearing and some great advice.

I guess, like someone else, all we can hope is that it plants a seed of doubt in his mind about how he's going to be a 'great dad' and continue to smoke (sounds like a lot) all day.