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!

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

Actually for lots of people it really is that hard. Not everybody is the same when it comes to addiction.

There is a theory that most of the 'low hanging fruit' has already been picked, when it comes to smoking cessation - i.e. the people who find quitting 'not really that hard' have mostly stopped (because why on earth wouldn't you?), and the smokers that are left are largely those who find it really bloody hard. This could be why the drop in smoking rates has pretty much stalled for the last 2 or 3 years.

Plenty - there is also the opinion that for a large percentage of the smokers left, smoking is the least pressing problem. Although I've found the switch to ecigs really easy, it did take me 20 odd years to get to the point where I was serious about stopping, and I think that it was much harder psychologically than physically to stop

Oh - and I think you are right that I was wrong re asthma medicatin - was sure Id read about it somewhere but a google isn't telling me anything - sorry about any confusion everyone!!

oohdaddypig my heart goes out to all addicts. I don't think one is more worthy of empathy than another.

I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of how harmful smoking/obesity during pregnancy can be towards babies.

My point was simply that some people are very flippant about one addiction and not the other.

OP there are that many toxins in the air and around us I wouldn't sweat about having a few on your clothes.

Obviously it's wise in todays climate not to smoke in the same room as a baby and it's preferable to smoke outside but to go as far as shower and change clothes after a cig is crazy.

The smoke that's left on your clothes is bad because it contains all the pollutants. It even seeps off your breath long after you have smoked. Your baby will get this into her system. It's your call really but I'm fairly sure that once you have looked into the facts you will feel fairly grubby for smoking around her.

My dp smokes rollups outside but he used to smoke in a room with a shut door. It wasn't good and I think we all suffered. I was too wrapped up in taking care of them to do anything.

I hope you can give up, but if you can't you will have to taking yourself outside for longer than just the fag time - you will have to spend a good while breathing clean air just to get the pollutants out of your breath so that you are safe for baby.

I don't think this used to be a problem as I think cigarettes are different now.

E cigarettes are a very good alternative. Continuing to smoke really isn't fair on your partner because it's like saying 'I won't be available to you for x minutes of the day' which is a bit off. As I say I put up with it but it wasn't pleasant and I don't feel good about it at all. DP is fairly oblivious.

but to go as far as shower and change clothes after a cig is crazy.

It's not crazy, but evidence based advice.
It's crazily cumbersome, so stopping smoking seems the obvious answer.

Try running instead. Don't forget she wants you to be with her forever, not just a few years before the cancer gets you, which it will.

It's not crazy, but evidence based advice

No it isn't.

You inhale more carcinogens going for a walk in town...and god only knows what's lurking in your house etc..

People are oh so precious now ...shower and change clothes pahh.

The thing with obesity is that a fat person holding a baby or sitting next to someone else doesn't risk anyone else's health. An obese person could sit sucking lard through a straw next to me and it wouldn't affect me in any way, unlike smoking, as I am an asthmatic with an allergy to cig smoke. Hell, someone could shoot up heroin next to me and it'd be less thoughtless and horrible than someone smoking next to me. Smoking is a more selfish addiction than overeating, because it doesn't just affect the person doing it, it is unpleasant and risks the health of those around them.

And I've witnessed a loved one die of smoking related cancer and it's fucking horrific. Also, my mum smoked all her life until she had to give up a few years because she developed emphysema. She has gone from being a vibrant, active, fit, passionate women who thought she had asthma to a horribly underweight husk of a woman, who can basically do nothing but slump on a chair coughing so violently that it makes her incontinent and has affected her eyesight and she can't do any hobbies, can't play properly with her grandchildren, can hardly walk around, sleeps appallingly, etc., and she's only in her mid-60s. Her elder sister, my aunt, meanwhile, has an active and fulfilling life whilst being a size 24.

So you think smoking outside is enough and you can carry on.

It isn't. You need to do everything suggested on here, including changing clothes and quarantine time.

And that is just to minimise the risk as much as a smoker can.

A close relative is currently dying of lung cancer. Caused by smoking. No fucking winning the fight. Just dying. So my sympathy is limited for self justification I am afraid.

Quarantine time?

Here's a better idea!

OP...Buy a plastic hamster type bubble and put your entire family in it when you go out or have visitors.

You can pick some old CMD filters up (Ex military grade) to afix to said family sized Hamster cage and keep your family safe from any airborne detritus and rogue chemicals.

Like I said, we all make our own choices - you carry on smoking, caruthers, and that it does not affect those around you. And no doubt the OP will make up his own mind.

How do you know I smoke?

Hopefully the OP realises that you have to be considerate but not quarantine himself because some precious members of the anti smoking brigade have given him OTT advice.

It would be great if the OP gave up smoking but this constant guilt trip and faux coughing is ludicrous.

Just quit. The end. And the bear and the man and the trooper lived happily ever after.

'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.'

Exactly. As a non smoker (and never have smoked) with no axe to bear, the absolutist rubbish spouted here is annoying. The harm done by smoking will be dosage related. Of course, overlaying that, there will be a probability distribution related to genetics and plain old fashioned chance, but the harm done to a baby by a smoker in the house, or exposure to the clothes of someone who has smoked 10 minutes earlier, are orders of magnitude different.

Of course, in an ideal world, there would be no smoking at all. However, I would bet a great deal of money that living near a busy road would put a baby far more at risk than smoking as the OP has described it. As would having a pet. As would many other risk factors. At the end of the day, babies have to live with families in the real world. Not all risks can be eliminated. Of course, stopping smoking has no downside and is the obvious solution. But can we not base it on something resembling facts and common sense, not hysteria?

Larry - of course all risks can't be eliminated and sadly the unforseen happens. But smoking is an entirely foreseeable habit that can be broken.

Worral - I appreciate your point but disagree. How much sympathy do you have for the drug addict who commits crime to feed his/her habit? Perhaps "sympathy" is the wrong word entirely. Perhaps it's "understanding". And I can't understand why the harm to loved ones isn't enough impetus to cease smoking.

The evidence surrounding the risks of smoking and passive smoking is strong. And we can do something about that. It's a hell of a lot harder to improve air pollution next to a busy road but the "fuck it then" approach as we light up a fag isn't helpful.

Oh, sorry, so you don't smoke, caruthers?

If you want to leave the passive smoking issue to one side, is there ONE reason why anybody should not advise the OP to stop?

Its not what you want to hear but there's loads of good advice on this thread and the best is - give it up. I gave up last year (since I was 15 in case you're wondering). Its pretty hellish but it had to be done. I went cold turkey but its such a personal thing. e-cigs sound like they could be helpful.
Good luck.

OP, you're going to be handed a beautiful, delicate, perfect little newborn - do you really want to hold that baby with stinky faghands?

stinkyfaghands

You have put it beautifully. A precious tiny delicate, probably pink, baby touching stinkyfagclothes, breathing stinkyfabreath and handled by stinkyfaghands.

Oh, sorry, so you don't smoke, caruthers

If you want to leave the passive smoking issue to one side, is there ONE reason why anybody should not advise the OP to stop

There is enough advice out there without me barracking him as well.

I just don't think changing clothes and showering together with quarantine is sensible or indeed needed.

Changing ALL clothes isn't a minimum of course but having a separate jacket is no big deal, surely? It tends to be colder outside anyway so having a fag necessitates having a jacket on in the first place.

As said earlier I stopped when I was pregnant and continued the break until over a year after he was born. When I started again in very stressful circumstances it started just in the evenings and I would shower before I went to bed. I did not consider this excessive or annoying, I considered it important because I wanted to protect DS as much as possible.

And why do you think they used to have smoking jackets and cigarette holders in the old days? Not only for the sake of vanity.

Perhaps a monocle and fez would be going a step too far?

Quit smoking
It's really not as hard as the nicotine patch pusherswould have us believe.
When I was pg with PFB my dh stopped smoking, without my asking. He said he didn't want to smoke around our baby. I honestly couldn't believe it. I was cnvinced he was a confirmed smoker. Truly.
It was the single most wonderful thing he has ever done. Every day that he holds our DCs with his strong clean hands and breathes near them with his clean breath and I am grateful to him. He was grumpy for a week (well, I mean, over an above the usual ) that was it. No looking back.
We both used to smoke. I quit (using the Allen Carr technique) about six years ago. He quit using the "just don't smoke anymore" technique about 4 years ago. The only thing we Regret is that we didn't do it sooner.
Quit. Just quit.
Even when I am pissed off with him I remember that he quit smoking and I love him for it.
Just quit.
Really.
Quit. It does nothing for you. It doesn't even relax you or get you high. It's just nicotine. It's shit.
Quit.