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!

Lolly, to be honest, I think you should encourage Tombo to quit now,so as to have put the worst stages behind him by the time your baby is born. Even with a perfectly normal delivery and a healthy baby, the first weeks are tough and stressful (though also magical), and truthfully, I don't think it's a good time to start giving up an addiction when you're staggering about from sleeplessness and worrying about feeding...

Itsnotthateasy, it is, actually. You seem to have difficulty accepting the dangers of smoking for babies.

Glad to hear you've made up and at the least OP is going to smoke outside if not stop altogether.

I'm sure he will be an excellent dad :)

My point was, people are much more willing to point out that binge eaters may have emotional issues, that means they use over eating as a comfort/crutch.

Many smokers do exactly the same with nicotine, but posters very rarely point out that the nicotine addict may be using tobacco as an emotional crutch.

I can't remember who said I was being 'antagonistic' to point this out, but I'm not sure how you could have got that out of my post.

These e cigs people are going on about, they are full of very nasty chemicals and mostly imported from abroad where their manufacture is completely unregulated.
There is no evidence as to their long term safety, I suspect smokers who use them are simply trading one set of problems for another.

I gave up using an e.cig and I thoroughly recommend them.

Moomin water vapour and nicotine is definitely less toxic than cigarettes. That's all that's important. I don't think slamming ecigs is helpful at all. It just means more people will continue smoking and ultimately more people will die.

Yes, smoker might be trading one problem for another, but the passive smoking is much less of an issue (is there any nicotine 'exhaust' from e-cigs? I don't actually know). And the e-cig uses is getting 'only' nicotine rather than a few thousand other carcinogenic substances.
Coming off e-cigs can be hard too as the nicotine addiction still needs to be broken, but nicotine leaves the body v quickly so it can be easier reducing and stopping e-cigs than proper cigarettes/tobacco.

Worra, I agree you were not antagonistic and I also agree that with any addiction there is likely to be some kind of psychological/emotional background to it.
And still, some people break their habit and others don't - professionals much much cleverer than me are trying to figure out why that is.

I get so irritated with the attitude "our parents smoked around us and we didn't have seatbelts and we're all fine, hence the risks can't be that great". It's ridiculous.

If 100 people ran across the motorway they wouldn't all die. Some would be completely fine, not a scratch on them, might even find the experience thrilling and enjoyable. It's doesn't change the fact that it is a very very silly and risky thing to do!

It's all about stats, not anecdotes.

Worra is the voice of reason.

You can be effected by passive smoking from the smoke that clings to your hair, skin and clothes. Plus there's the fact that dc will at some point see you smoking, which I would have a problem with. I assume you don't want your dc to grow up and takin sm

Take up smoking? How will you discourage this when you are doing it yourself?

There is another option, you could seek some help and try to give up?

Are those saying that it's no big deal parents if children who have asthma or glue ear etc

Have you never known anyone who's death could have been avoided buy stopping smoking. Who has left children behind?

There is also the epigenetic effects of smoking: my DM smoked right through her pg with me, and my childhood. I have never had a cigarette. My DDs both have asthma - there is now concrete evidence that the GC of smokers are predisposed to asthma through an epigenetic route. I will never know for sure, but suspect my mother's smoking is why my DC have to go through their lives with inhalers.

From the New Scientist:

"Pregnant rats given nicotine produced asthmatic pups that went on to produce their own asthmatic pups, despite the absence of nicotine exposure in the third generation, according to a new study. The results suggest that nicotine can leave heritable marks on the genome, which make future offspring more susceptible to respiratory conditions."

The same would be true of e-cigs with nicotine in them.

There is no use in giving facts about smoking, every body with 1/2 brain cells knows the risks. Allen Carr book is very good.

Obesity have got real risks and it's a bigger threat to Heath ( Google it).

Wow I didn't know about that Prof.

Glad my parents didn't smoke!

Perhaps I used the word antagonistic incorrectly Worral. But I do feel that comparing a nicotine addiction to an eating addiction in the context of a thread about harm to babies was just trying to inflame the thread.

My heart goes out to kids who live in a house with smokers.

My mother smoked and it has definitely affected my siblings and I. And at least she had the excuse that the dangers weren't known then.

Why should a baby have to have its health affected from birth in such a detrimental way? It has no choice. There is also evidence that nicotine damages sperm so there is an effect even before birth.

I appreciate addictions are hard to beat - but why wouldn't you at least try?

For what it's worth, my mother finally quit smoking - it's doable for even the most hardened addicts.

PS My DM is not a bad person. Back in the '60s most people smoked and there was almost zero knowledge about passive smoking. Nowadays, there is no excuse.

Prof plum - that is fascinating. So many of our grandparents smoked. Perhaps this is one of the reasons behind the escalation in asthma rates? I also wonder if it can be reversed? Will our grandchildren experience better health as a result?

There is also the epigenetic effects of smoking: my DM smoked right through her pg with me, and my childhood. I have never had a cigarette. My DDs both have asthma - there is now concrete evidence that the GC of smokers are predisposed to asthma through an epigenetic route. I will never know for sure, but suspect my mother's smoking is why my DC have to go through their lives with inhalers.

Now that's interesting ProfPlum

My DM also smoked during her pregnancy with me (3rd child - she stopped with my brothers) and my DD has terrible asthma.

Food for thought.

The weird thing is, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, most adults smoked - and yet I only ever came across two children with asthma (they lived near my grandmother, twins). Nowadays smokers are in the minority, and yet it seems that there's a lot more asthmatic children (and adults, come to that). I'm no champion of smoking, so am not trying to say that smoking doesn't cause asthma, am just wondering why there seems to be more of it about nowadays?

Interesting profplum, particularly as nicotine is a component of some asthma medication.

Re ecigs and toxins, my e liquid contains nicotine, vegetable glycerin, propy glycerol and food grade flavourings. None of which have been proven to be harmful. Cigarettes on the other hand...

Well if testing on rats has produced these results clearly humans will. What with us being so closely related and all

Asthma is more complex than 'just' smoking, but somebody with asthma, child or adult, will certainly be more likely to have more problems with it if they live in a house with a smoker.

Stopping smoking is not really that hard, if you are motivated.

I can still remember my last cigarette. I was standing outside a guest house in Edinburgh, and half way through my fag I was thinking "WTF am I doing, I am on holiday in Scotland to enjoy nature and the fresh air, and here I am polluting it!"

Nicotine in pregnancy is far from ideal.

Being around someone who is using an e-cig while pregnant (or at any other time) does not present any known risk:

By reviewing over 9,000 observations about the chemistry of the vapor and the liquid in e-cigarettes, Dr. Burstyn was able to determine that the levels of contaminants e-cigarette users are exposed to are insignificant, far below levels that would pose any health risk. Additionally, there is no health risk to bystanders.

From an article here which has a link to the original study.

gin I hadn't read that about nicotine as an asthma mediction. Are you sure you're not thinking of propylene glycol - a major constituent of both e liquid and asthma inhalers? I'd be interested if you have any further info.

OP your DW said you have an e cig. If it's one of those cig-alike things from a newsagents/supermarket and it's not hitting the spot, there are much better e cigs available which will also work out much cheaper in the long run.

I stopped smoking by accident at the beginning of october by switching to an e cig - my quit date isn't until 1st March! It was that easy

Come and join us on the vaping thread and we can point you at some decent kit. Don't feel you have to read the whole thread, it's massive. Just jump in and shout 'help!'