Smoking all through pregnancy - was it ever acceptable?

[ClayDell]

I was born in 1972

My mum fully admitted that she smoked throughout her pregnancy with me.

i looked at my medical records and I was in a special baby unit for the first month of my life with jaundice

Was smoking throughout pregnancy considered acceptable in 1972?

I was born in 1961. My Dad was a smoker, my Mum wasn't. I can't remember if Dad smoked in the house when we were little. Later, definitely not. What I do remember very clearly is that it was frequently reported on the news from the late 1960s on that doctors and scientists had established a link between lung cancer and smoking and were now advising that smokers should do their level best to give up. I was terrified by this because of my Dad and I desperately wanted him to give up. He managed to cut down a bit, but didn't finally give up until he was in his 50s, by which time he'd probably been smoking for 40 years. Later he got COPD and that affected his health quite badly in the last years of his life, although he did make it to 89.

Now, if it was known that smoking was a risk for lung cancer, it didn't take that much imagination to see that it was probably also a risk for other health problems as well. It was not a huge surprise when research started to show that it was a factor in lots of cancers and also in heart disease. The thalidomide scandal had woken a lot of people up to the fact that anything that got into a mother's bloodstream during pregnancy was likely to end up in the baby's bloodstream too.

I don't know when doctors and midwives started advising pregnant women not to smoke, but it was definitely frowned on in the early 1990s when I was pregnant. I had to buy some cigarettes for my MIL, who was hopelessly addicted but also had dementia, and I felt very uncomfortable about it indeed given that I was heavily pregnant at the time. So I must have expected others to be judging me unfavourably.

I also remember a woman in a neighbouring bed who'd had a very small baby well before the due date, who was in the special care baby unit. She was a smoker who'd had another baby, also premature, less than a year earlier. I knew this because it was all spelled out during the consultant's ward round (no confidentiality at all). The consultant expressed herself very plainly about the smoking (and the back to back pregnancies). I doubt it had much effect.

ETA: no teacher of mine ever smoked in class, either in primary or secondary school. The staffroom was a different matter!

My mother gave up smoking the day she found out she was expecting me in 1962 and wouldn't even take an aspirin, as the thalidomide tragedy had come out the year before. I'm beginning to think she was unusual.

I don't know about the 1970s but in 1983 I had a summer job in a local factory. I knew one of the permanent staff members there from primary school and noticed that she was very pregnant and smoking.

By then it was definitely common knowledge that smoking while pregnant wasn't recommended because I asked her about it.
She told me that she had been told that babies born to mothers who smoked were usually smaller and she wanted a small baby!

Well I suppose post-delivery is fine if they didn't smoke during the pregnancy!

That is being very charitable though.

Surely there would be medical concerns if a breastfeeding mother chose to smoke.

My GP told me 5 a day was better than 10 and carrying on smoking was less stressful than giving up. I was 35 then and had been smoking since I was 15.
This was in 1997. Yes really 1997😱😱😱😱😱😱

I had my first baby 1985, I've never smoked. What I will say is that I had friends who were smokers, but couldn't stomach smoking during pregnancy. I'd heard older women say similar. They all did the smug thing of claiming that they gave up for the baby's sake. There was conflicting information from credible doctors.
Women might have given up during their pregnancies, but us non smokers would have it inflicted on us, everywhere we went. I couldn't eat out when pregnant because of the smell of cigarette smoke, coming from the smoking section. You could go to a medical appointment and the staff would be smoking. Our teachers smoked.
I've had health issues and MRIs, I've been told by my Consultant that he could see passive smoking damage and sees it a lot on those now 55+, it's what helped to change the law.
I come from a mixed heritage background and mix in African communities, jaundice is common, so I wonder if that puts the stats up. Also re miscarriage, the stats haven't really changed, there's slight rises, even though there's less smoking. But I do think it's the worse thing that you can do, besides some class A drugs.

A Mother is given safe smoking advice and then trusted to make her decisions. If a woman posts on here wanting relatives to carry out safe smoking, she's called ridiculous. So there's still mixed opinions.

Not from health care professionals, I'd say.

How can you research though? Is that why loads of things are off limits during pregnancy because of the ethics?

I was born in 70 and DM gave up smoking as soon as she knew she was pregnant.

I know someone who smoked throughout her pregnancy. Her son is now 18 and severely asthmatic.

In Europe (where they still smoke much more than we do in the UK) it’s not quite as frowned upon to have a few fags while pregnant. My European friend cut down to one or two a day (she used to smoke much more) and said the midwife was fine with that and had congratulated her for cutting down. This was last year. Her friends with babies were all also encouraged to cut down ‘if they could’ but there doesn’t seem to be as much fretting of ‘omg your baby could have birth defects or asthma or die’ if you so much as inhale smoke while pregnant.

The NHS recommends that smoking mothers breastfeed instead of formula-feed.

It certainly wasnt acceptable in 1982 when I was pregnant.

Yes. My Gran told me she was the weird one for not smoking. She just never picked the habit up, even though all of her siblings and friends did. Apparently they were also prescribed even during pregnancy for stress and anxiety. It was so commonplace to smoke, let’s not forget, you could even do it on a plane! So yes, it was just a thing.

To be honest, even in the 90s I had a friend whose mum smoked like a chimney throughout pregnancy and when breastfeeding. My DH doesn’t believe me when I tell him but she would hold the baby in one arm to breastfeed and have a fag in the other. She only ate one meal a day in the evening as well and just lived off coffee and cigarettes. Really strange woman. Middle class as well so didn’t fit the stereotypes.

Yes, was acceptable, along with a daily Guinness 'for the iron'. Look at some statistics. Absolutely fantastic that it's become rare to meet a smoker now.

Of course it was common. Whenever I went to visit relatives who had babies, the ward would be full of women puffing away and all hospital beds (not just maternity) had ashtrays on the bedside table. People smoked incessantly as they were bored and stuck in a hospital bed, were not encouraged to get up and move but to sit in the bed and rest. They didn’t have their babies to occupy them as they were all kept and looked after in the nursery and just brought out to the women at scheduled feed times, then taken away. If you wanted to look you had to go to the nursery window and a nurse would hold up the baby for you. So, they all sat in beds smoking like chimneys. They usually smoked all throughout pregnancy as well as it accepted and not recognised as being bad for you.

To add, there was no such thing as no smoking wards in hospital, just like everywhere else in society, you were surrounded by people puffing away, it was just normal. I recall all of my teachers smoked in the classroom (looking back, not that I could blame them)🤣.

The midwife insisted on finishing her cigarette before delivering my baby. I was pushing! 1974.

My mother says they all smoked in the 60s. They'd rest the ashtray on their bump and if the baby moved, the ash would skitter across the ashtray!

God yes! My parents both smoked all through ma’s pregnancies with me and my brother (late 1950s). Both were what I think of as ‘Rationing’ smokers: non-stop fags curbed other cravings, and they just carried on smoking heavily after the War. Neither ever quit.

I think the harm was known and understood for decades before the policy tipping point. I started smoking as a teenager (I know, I know) in about 1986 or thereabouts and it was well known that it was harmful then but the full ban didn’t come into effect until the mid 2000s. There was no real doubt that it was a bloody bad idea.

People are stubborn and stuck in their ways and often need these things to be mandated before they do anything about it.

It does shock me though looking back on it to think you could still smoke on public transport until the late 1980s at least.

The dangers were known in the 60s.

My mum had 3 kids in 1965, 1966 and 1967. She immediately gave up smoking for each baby, once she knew she was pregnant.
That contributed to her giving up smoking for good - since she had avoided smoking for most of 3 years due to 3 pregnancies, she decided to never go back.

My dad gave up when I was about 4 - there are pictures of me as a small kid sitting on his knee, and he has a cigarette in his hand.

They're both in their 90s now, and both are so thankful of that decision they made >50 years ago to quit.