One in ten smoke in pregnancy

[SoTheMoon]

AIBU to be totally shocked by this?

I honestly thought it was much, much lower. Government target announced today is to get it down to 6%.

I am not surprised. I was in NICU with my little boy and couldn't believe the amount of women who were standing outside the maternity ward in labour smoking! In my sons ward there were 4/8 beds where the parents of the babies were smokers. Used to make me so cross when a 27 weeker would have cuddle time with a woman who had just smoked loads of Fags outside.

Smoking in pregnancy isn't 'that bad' if you understand statistics and research.

It's low risk. The main reason we have anti-smoking campaigns against pregnant women is because it's 'women'.

The highest increased percentage of risk is after birth and with SIDS - so its smoking 'in the home by anyone'. And that's still a slightly increased risk, lower than living next to a power plant.

But you know let's not let that get in the way of criticising addicts mostly from the poorest demographics

This should really be on the Feminist topic so we can have a really good hard look at actual evidence and stats. And what it means for women from the poorest backgrounds.

(No, I've never smoked. And I'm an addiction Counsellor for a charity)

Well, if e-cigs were promoted by midwives it would probably be a lot lower.

I know people will say they haven't been around a long enough to know the exact dangers, even though there has been loads of research which can be found in other threads if you care to find them. If people are struggling to quit smoking cold turkey or with the other NRT methods vaping would be the next best thing and then people can wean off nicotine while still keeping the hand to mouth habit.

I did smoke in a pregnancy. I am not proud of it but I became seriously mentally unwell in that pregnancy and only just managed to keep myself out of a psych hospital. I couldn't function on a decent level at all. It took all my energy to keep myself safe. It was a horrendous time in my life. Thankfully it settled down with a lot of help in the last few weeks of pregnancy but for months I could only focus on getting through every hour safely. Quitting smoking on top was just too much. It was hard enough to actually eat properly.

I have never had a problem putting him first in the 16 years he has been here since.

megletthesecond, I'm also wondering how skewed the numbers are. If it's 1 in 10 smoked at all during pregnancy, even if they fully quit during those 9 months, I think the result are a little less shocking (not that 1 in 10 is as bad as I thought). I cut down the second I had my positive in my last pregnancy, I had completely quit by 6-7 weeks gone. Haven't smoked since (though someone who's never smoked will not understand how much of an achievement that is for me). However, it will always be a fact of my first pregnancy that I had smoked whilst carrying a child - even though for 36 weeks of a 42 week pregnancy the worst thing I really put in my system was marmite sandwiches and the occasional can of Pepsi.

It's bloody difficult to quit, I'm not going to berate any woman who can't. Hopefully they get the support they need and are fully informed of the SIDS risk after birth, that is the most important factor.

I have only ever known one person who smoked whilst pregnant.

I'm really shocked it's 10%

"This should really be on the Feminist topic"

No it shouldn't. I'd be just as shocked by this statistic if it included pregnant males. I didn't post this topic as part of a discussion on feminism. It isn't.

It's up to everyone to reduce smoking rates in the UK, and in pregnant women, not just women.

e-cigs are promoted as a quitting aid, not just as a straight swap alternative. Because we don't know whether e-cigs are dangerous but we know that smoking is. "Maybe dangerous" is less bad than "Definitely dangerous", especially if it helps people quit.

Honestly I think 10% is low. That means 90% of pregnant women don't smoke.

And as for the social services comment Get a handle on what social services really have to deal with and then come back and tell me that an occasional cigarette is a big deal.

I quit when I was pregnant but it was easy for me and my friends and family were supportive, in fact they would have been horrified had I carried on. I can quite imagine that for some women that wouldn't be the case.

you are kidding yourself if you think it's any better having a glass of wine than a fag imo

Having one glass of wine and one cigarette might be broadly comparable, but the thing is that a lot of women really do only have one or two small glasses of wine in their whole pregnancy, while most smokers are going to be doing it on a daily basis.

The thing about smoking is it seems to be so segregated across society - either almost everyone you know smokes or almost no one does. I fall in the latter category, and was so shocked when I saw pregnant women smoking outside the hospital. However, while I reserve the right to disapprove, I think it's important to note that it benefits us all that women have the full legal right to smoke and do other harmful things to their bodies while pregnant, and that we should be really careful of anything that chips away at that right.

I agree that people living with pregnant women, whether fathers-to-be, teenage siblings of the baby or the pregnant woman's parents should also be targeted by anti-smoking campaigns. "I only ever smoke outside" isn't good enough and I know a lot of women who gave up in pregnancy but whose partners continued to smoke.

Actually, maybe it should. Fewer women smoke than men as it is, and fewer pregnant women relative to proportion of women. And then this fraction of womwn are demonized. Sounds a bit like a feminist issue to me...

How do they get those figures though? From maternity notes I assume. So it probably is higher than that in reality as I'm sure there will be lots of women who smoke in pregnancy but are not honest about that with thier midwives and caregivers.

I moved from a low smoking area - affluent to a very high one - very deprived area.

In the deprived area the asked you a lot but also took your blood to check carbon monoxide levels - though MW said it was routine and also checked no issue with gas appliances - though had my doubts about gas appliances bit.

I’ve e never smoked - nether has DH but they were still insisted blood tests for that had to be done.

I don't know how widespeard that testing scheme was though.

I think smoking is disgusting, but stop pretending this is about anything more than class. Recreational coke snorters on here get off scot-free for heaven's sake - but "nice girls" have never smoked, have they? That's all you really care about, unless you're appalled at both.

I think you have a point about class here to some degree, but do you really think that there's a widespread acceptance of taking cocaine while pregnant?!

The main reason we have anti-smoking campaigns against pregnant women is because it's 'women'

Well, I've heard a lot of arguments in regards to smoking in pregnancy but this takes the

So its just sexism?

😂

Not while pregnant mayhe, but I too have noticed that having a coke habit seems OK on MN.

SotheMoon

There's no such thing as pregnant males

And no it's not up to 'everyone, not just women - so you mean men?' To stop pregnant women smoking

How about you look at how harmful it actually is ?

Plenty in the medical profession tell the women on this thread that no, if they're depressed or suffering stress that they shouldn't stop smoking - because it's LESS harmful medically

How about we get some perspective about what smoking while pregnant really means with actual risk

I work with young mums (youngest 14 when she became pregnant). And a lot of them have had abuse, traumatic childhoods, addiction and street living. Most of them give up drugs the second they find out they are pregnant. Crack, meth, heroin, alcohol all given up cold turkey. Plus they have to give up the abusive boyfriend and the dodgy friends.

A lot still smoke. It's not ideal. But they are trying so hard for their babies. So we go for harm minimisation. I do wonder if posters on MN sometimes forget the realities for other women.

And I do agree with Laurie that it is a feminist issue.

Numbers like this always serve to remind me that we all live in our own bubbles (as MargaretCavendish said :) )

The number of people I know who smoke at all is under 1 in 10, and enough of those that smoke at all are "only a a party" type smokers who would stop during pregnancy.

Do we know if this number distinguishes between "continued to smoke at previous levels" vs "had one cigarette during the entire pregnancy"?

"There's no such thing as pregnant males"

Exactly. However, I still expect males involved in women's care to support her to give up smoking during pregnancy.

It's harmful, it may not be the only harmful thing, but I think that number could and should be a lot lower.

I believe some of them may be people who still stopped during pregnancy.
I found out I was pregnant at 6 weeks, when i ended up in hospital for hyperemesis. At that point, I couldn't smoke anymore even if I'd wanted to because it made me throw up. I was sent to EPU a couple of times, and at the first appointment, they asked about smoking. I told them that I'd smoked as I didn't know I was pregnant at the very start, but that I stopped about a week ago before I even knew because it made me so sick. They wrote down that I smoked. Doesn't matter that I didn't smoke at all for the rest of the time and the nurse actually told me it wouldn't matter as it was so early and that lots of people smoke, drink or take medication at that stage since they don't know, but either way, it's still there on my notes and will probably have gone towards some of their statistics.

A friend of mine was a bit bemused recently after she mentioned to the health visitor that she'd smoked once when the baby was about 8 weeks old (she stopped in pregnancy as it made her sick too) and that it tasted awful, and the health visitor wrote down that mum is a smoker!
They'd just been discussing how they both stopped in pregnancy, and the health visitor was saying she stopped with her first child because it made her gag and that she's never been back and hates them smell now, and friend said her bit, and health visitor classed her as a smoker.

I think the number is even lower than that, just because there are probably others like me who actually did stop but admitted they smoked in the first weeks. It's so silly, because she might have stopped after, and still very early on when she stopped, but will be called a smoker.

No Rhubarb - not 'just' sexism but it's certainly a main factor like I said

If you look at pregnant smokers anecdotes on here about bar staff withholding alcohol (1 glass!) to pregnant women, spitting on pregnant smokers, criticising pregnant women's food choices in public - and that's just public happenings !

What about the control in the home, that women are 60% more likely to suffer violence at the hands of their partner while pregnant

We are moving towards a society where pregnant women's bodies are 'owned' by society - like a watered down Handmaid's Tale

Smoking while pregnant carries risk, a low risk - and more to the mother than the foetus

Smoking makes it harder for a woman to get pregnant.
Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely than other women to have a miscarriage.
Smoking can cause problems with the placenta—the source of the baby's food and oxygen during pregnancy. For example, the placenta can separate from the womb too early, causing bleeding, which is dangerous to the mother and baby.
Smoking during pregnancy can cause a baby to be born too early or to have low birth weight—making it more likely the baby will be sick and have to stay in the hospital longer. A few babies may even die.
Smoking during and after pregnancy is a risk factor of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is an infant death for which a cause of the death cannot be found.
Babies born to women who smoke are more likely to have certain birth defects, like a cleft lip or cleft palate.

From the CDC.

I think all of these risks are risks that shouldn't be taken. We (everyone) needs to address why the 1 in 10 figure is not 1 in 100. Lots of reasons coming out on this thread about why some women haven't given up - those are the focus points that need to change going forwards.

*So the Moon ecigs are not safe for pregnancy because they contain nicotine. However they are much safer than cigarettes.

There is research going on that suggests that at least some (a lot of people think most) of the harm associated with addiction in pregnancy can actually be attributed to partner violence and homelessness/stress/MH issues.

When programs take women with substance issues, remove the violent partner (by giving the pregnant women safe accommodation), give good, regular person-centred healthcare, stabilise MH, offer counselling and so on, the incidence of drug-impact on babies is reduced.

Where are all the signs up everywhere telling men to stop being abusive in pregnancy (or at all)? Why aren't men bombarded with this message?

I do not know of a single person who has (knowingly) smoked whilst pregnant.

I know of one, a good friend, who smoked cannabis once a week from the second tri onwards. She said (and I agree with her from what I saw) that she needed it for her broader mental wellbeing. My cousin also smoked in early pregnancy - I was more shocked by this as I had a stereotype in my mind of what kind of demographic a pregnant smoker would fit, and she was very different.

SotheMoon - what you've just posted off google is not statistics (obvs)

If you research actual increased risk percentages you will see that stress is worse for pregnancy than smoking

That having a mother who suffers with depression is worse for pregnancy than smoking

That living in certain polluted areas is worse for pregnancy than smoking

That being deficient in certain vitamins or not being vaccinated properly is worse than smoking in pregnancy

Frankly, and not to put too fine a point on it - being fucking poor is way worse for outcomes for children than smoking