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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to be annoyed that my father was smoking a cigar near my 6 month old baby?

26 replies

GiantHulkHands · 21/05/2015 18:05

My dad went on holiday last week and decided to start smoking cigars again after a break of about a year. He was a heavy smoker of cigarettes when I was growing up and it took him a huge effort to stop smoking which he did, about a decade ago, due to declining health.

My baby is 6 months old and I phoned my parents last night and asked if I could come over for a visit today. My parents both know how anti-smoking I am; I used to work in a Stop Smoking project and I don't like being near smokers. They didn't tell me last night that my dad had started smoking again.

When I went to their house, the baby was sitting in her chair in the living room and my dad shut the door between the conservatory and the living room and lit up a cigar. I could smell it straight away; the baby's hat and cardigan and nursing bag were in there with him and I was really annoyed. I told my mum that she could have warned me that dad had started smoking again and she said I was being unreasonable because if I had been told, I wouldn't have brought the baby round for a visit, which is not true but a heads up would have been appreciated.

Am I being unreasonable to have expected a heads up that my dad had started smoking again when I intended to bring my 6 month old baby round to their house?

OP posts:
PlentyOfPubeGardens · 22/05/2015 21:32

Nanny0gg - He is an adult who most probably knows all the risks and is choosing to ignore them. You can lead a horse to water and all that.

He is an adult who has had a long battle with addiction and has just relapsed after a year of being smoke-free. I'm sure he does know the risks, we've all known the risks for a long time. If that actually helped there'd be no smokers left.

Of course the OP is aware of the risks to her father. I expect that she's also aware that no amount of talking will change his habits.

I would hope OP is fully aware of the risks to her father, given her past line of work. I would not expect someone who used to work for Stop Smoking Services to have such a fatalistic attitude but perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps that's why SSS have such a massive problem engaging smokers.

Her first priority is her DC ...

Her DD has not been harmed by this incident. As I said above, the risk from THS is tiny, entirely theoretical and based on exposures many orders of magnitude greater than a few belongings in a room for a bit with a lit cigar (happy to post links but it will be tomorrow). So OP could, if she chose, move on to other priorities. Not to do so, and to focus solely on your DC's wellbeing even when they're fine is, IMO, a good definition of PFB.

... and your posts are unnecessarily harsh.

The facts are harsh and I wish it was unneccessary to state them.

  • half of all long-term smokers die early from the effects of smoking. This amounts to ~ 1/10 of the entire population of the UK.
  • Smokers who die early lose on average a decade of life.
  • For every smoker who dies there are 20 more living with tobacco-related disease.

I think it's entirely necessary to state these facts because people, especially women who are PG or have young DC, are bombarded with scary news stories all the time about health risks to themselves and their DC but the scale and likelihood of the risk is never put into context. This causes people (esp. mothers) to become pointlessly anxious about a whole host of tiny risks they can't reasonably avoid. That does nobody any good. THS falls into this category. Nobody has ever been documented as coming to harm because of third-hand smoke and in a situation where THS might become a concievable problem, second-hand smoke would already be causing far more harm. Meanwhile, OP's dad has at least a 50% chance of dying prematurely (I say 'at least' because he first packed in smoking because his health was suffering).

The extent to which grandparents' relationships with their GC matter will vary from family to family. Only OP knows how important it is to her and her DD that her dad is around for a good while longer. Maybe it's not important.

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