Stigmatising pregnant smokers makes them LESS likely to seek help to give up

[edam]

so if you really care about the health of other peoples' unborn babies, put your judgypants away - you are doing more harm than good.

Agreed. It's just as difficult to give up smoking whilst pregnant than it is at any other time. Yet non-pregnant people are applauded for trying to quit!

The only reason I managed to give whilst pg was because I had HG and couldn't stomach anything!

Oh, you poor thing! An unexpected positive consequence, though?

whilst i agree that the medical profession should market themselves as being undrstanding to pregnant smokers

i think that society at large is right to shake their heads at the selfishness.

It's stating the obvious really isn't it. Study after study has shown that you can't shame people into changing their behaviour - be it obesity, smoking, alcohol - censure makes people feel crap about themselves, reinforces 'bad' health practices, and makes it less likely that they will seek help.

People love sticking the knife in though (HCPs just as much as the daily mail-ites) so I doubt anything is going to change.

I did find the RCOG quote intensely annoying - healthy women have healthy babies who grow into healthy children - actually no it often doesn't happen like that. You can do your best to reduce risk but anyone can have an 'unhealthy' child. That message is extremely upsetting to those of us who've done everything right & still had babies die.

It's a fine line.

Getting smoker's help and understanding - yes.
Pussy-footing around the fact that smoking while pregnant is a really, really bad idea - no.

I've heard more than one pregnant smoker say that it's better to have a few cigs a day than try to give up, as the stress would be worse for mum and baby than the cigarette. GUFF.

If we are going to treat smokers as addicts who need help, rather than evil social pariahs, we have to accept that addicts are delusional, lie to themselves and others about their habit, and need a lot of tough love alongside the bleeding hearts stuff...

Spoken as an ex 20-a-day-er, btw.

Spoken as an ex 20-a-day-er, btw.

they are the worse

I agree with Custardo society at large does have a right to shake their heads at the selfishness of pregnant smokers.

If it didn't smoking whilst pregnant would be deemed less unacceptable than it is which would result in more babies needlessly suffering.

If we all just pretend it's acceptable the mothers doing it will be lulled into a false sense of security. Surely the fact that so many want to give up is due to the pressure society puts on them.

So sorry, sadminster. And you've made an important point - all too often well-intentioned messages about what's good for your health unfortunately have the side effect of making women feel when something goes wrong they must be to blame in some way. Sadly, sometimes shit happens and it's no-one's fault. Doing everything 'right' is no guarantee.

Another unfortunate effect is that self-righteous people take it upon themselves to judge others. I'm not a particularly religious person but at church school was very struck by the lines 'judge not lest ye be judged' and 'look for the log in your own eye before you condemn the mote in another's'.