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Pregnancy

Talk about every stage of pregnancy, from early symptoms to preparing for birth.

smoking in pregnancy

251 replies

fallala · 27/02/2003 21:11

An acquaintence(close friend of a friend) is six months pregnant, and has not managed to stop smoking ( about ten a day I think)
I don't smoke (used to smoke the odd one or two but stopped when I realised I was starting to enjoy it).

I appreciate it must be hard to give up but can it really be THAT hard? I struggle to be positive about this person at the best of times. Actually I think she is a silly little so and so. Am I being a bit harsh to think shre is being stupid and selfish? Not that I am perfect but I would never have done anythign to harm my babies in the womb.

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aloha · 04/03/2003 13:51

It's just not true that anything you do that is less than healthy will adversely affect your foetus. Eating a cream bun will not affect a child, but smoking a cigarette will. I just don't think you can reasonably dismiss facts and serious medical research as 'scare tactics' either. They are simply the truth, and I personally think that everyone should be aware of as many facts as possible about their health. What happens next is up to the individual, though if facts help them make decisions that will benefit their child's health during its whole lifetime, then surely that has to be a good thing. I have never thought that ignorance is bliss. I will never use a sunbed again having seen what damage it can do, for example. I am lucky in that I have never smoked so never had to give up, but I still think that there is no use shielding people from the truth just to make them feel better.

fallala · 05/03/2003 10:24

Aloha you are very eloquent and have said what I have been thinking. I don't see any point in muddying the discussion about other bad things you can do when pregnant as if that made smoking not so bad.
Anyoine is wellcome to open a topic about cream buns in pregnancy but it has nothing to do with smoking

Noone is calling smokers selfish bad mothers but smoking in pregnancy is surely an example of selfish behaviour by anyone's definition? That's not to harrass or get at smokers, but this is a discussion on smoking in pregnancy. The more I read here the more I see how hard it must be to give up.

Someone asked if I breathed traffic fumes when pregnant - yes sometimes but not if I could help it and it was not my choice to do so. (I do love the smell of two stroke oil but that's another story)

OP posts:
mum2toby · 05/03/2003 13:00

I wasn't referring to eating cream buns (!!) in pregnancy when I said other things are unhealthly, but it does look like people who have never been in a situation to have to give up smoking are judging women who smoke (no matter how little) during pregnancy. I have never been a heroin addict so I would therefore not assume to make any comments about the difficulty of packing it in.

Oh and smoking one cigarette is not going to damage your baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That IS being hysterical about it!

prufrock · 05/03/2003 13:33

I have smoked, and am currently struggling to give up. But I didn't have a single cigarette for 4 months prior to conceiving, and throughtout my entire pregnancy. I did smoke occasionally when breastfeeding, but have never smoked in front of my dd.

One cigarette will affect your baby. That is the difference between cigarettes and other "bad" things. Nicotine is one of the fastest acting drugs there is, and will go into the babys blood via the placenta no matter how little you smoke. In contrast, alcohol does not transfer until the concentrations are quite high (I'm not sure of the exact figures but think I remember reading that after 1 unit there was no trace of alcohol in the feotal bloodstream)
I do know how difficult it is to give up. But there are lots of things that are difficult about being a parent. Sometimes I felt like throwing my dd out of the window when she refused to stop crying - but I didn't, because it would harm her. And sometimes I felt like having a cigarette when I was pregnant with dd - but I didn't, because it would harm her.

witch1 · 05/03/2003 13:39

Just a thought but giving up during pg isnt surely the only responsible thing to do . If you start again afterwards arent you being as irresponsible. What use to a child is a parent dead or incapacitated by smoking related illness.
Care for your child doenst last for nine months but as my beloved mother likes to point out regularly lasts a lifetime.

bells2 · 05/03/2003 13:48

Prufrock I have never smoked but I can imagine how hard that was for you. Well done you.

mum2toby · 05/03/2003 16:11

I don't disagree with anybody that smoking is harmful. I'm not that naive and I did do some research about the effects of nicotine and alcohol during pregnancy, which is why I stopped whilst pregnant (apart from the odd half cigarette every couple days, later on in my pregnancy)... I did my best and still am!! I don't like the thought that there are people out there classing me as a bad, selfish parent. It hard enough bringing up kids with all the unjust' criticism that flies about!

With Nicotine being so fast acting and damaging then surely the WORST thing you could do when you find out you are pregnant is try to give up, for example, by wearing patches! Would that not be making matters worse by having a continual dose for 24 hours?

mum2toby · 05/03/2003 16:12

.... sorry .. I meant to say I'd done some research at University....

SofiaAmes · 05/03/2003 22:12

prufrock, good on you and very eloquently put.
Fallala I have a friend who while pregnant loved the smell of petrol. I, on the other hand, found it so revolting that I couldn't fill up my car without puking, so my dh had to fill my car for me both times I was pregnant.

mum2toby, nobody is picking on you personally. You stopped smoking for the most part while pregnant. People are complaining about smoking during pregnancy because that's the subject of this thread.

SueW · 06/03/2003 11:38

fallalla - another two stroke addict. 2stroke and leather; two stroke and musty parkas. Hmmmm. Takes me back to my teenage scooter-mad days.

Tamz77 · 06/03/2003 20:01

I apologise in advance for having so many things to say!

Firstly: all the non-smoking anti-smokers show a lack of understanding about just how difficult it is to give up smoking. It is an addiction; no-one expects an alcoholic or heroin addict or compulsive gambler to just stop, suddenly and for good. There are thousands of women out there who are pregnant, who smoke, and who feel really terrible about doing so; but guilt doesn't always make the cravings any easier to overcome.

And even though it's not 'done' to say so, I hope some of you will agree that in the early stages of pregnancy especially, it's often difficult to feel any significant sense of duty towards your unborn? There's at least a couple of months in pregnancy when you know that what you're carrying is practically microscopic. You haven't seen your baby, you're not showing, not feeling it move, and on top of all that are likely to be stressed and depressed with hormonal fluctuations and morning sickness.

Add to this the fact that smoking is quite a subtle and insidiuous way of damaging our own health and that of any foetus: even though we know it can cause lung cancer and increase the chances of having a low-weight/premature baby, to many women these are just vague maybes, some time off in the future. If you get drunk the mental and physical effects are obvious quite quickly, thus it's more apparent that your baby will be feeling the effects too, while regular smokers might say they actually feel better for smoking (relaxant, sociability etc), and argue - quite reasonably - that smoking is no guarantee their baby will have problems at birth or beyond.

I might be completely wide of the mark here but I'd guess that most women who smoke during pregnancy are typically low income, and thus their children will face many other detrimental affects on their health, such as poor housing and poor diet. Of course the effects are cumulative but it's easy to look at the mother of a premature baby and say, "well she shouldn't have smoked", when smoking might be her only luxury, or something she feels she needs to combat stress; when she might be poorly educated about health matters such as smoking in pregnancy and lacking a support network to help her give up; when she might have spent 9 months eating rubbish because it's cheaper to go to KFC than it is to eat 5 portions of fruit and veg per day; when she might be living in inadequate housing and possibly working too hard for too little money in a job fundamentally unsuited to pregnancy.

Plenty of women in 'peak health' have preterm babies, or babies with other associated difficulties. We're always being told that breastfed babies are healthier and more intelligent but a significant proportion of mothers choose to bottlefeed for no reason other than they just don't want to breastfeed: could we also call them selfish, for knowingly and deliberately putting their children at a disadvantage? This argument could be extrapolated to the nth degree about many more aspects of maternal conduct, and I stick to my original point that a baby should not have rights that overrule the rights of the mother, before it is born.

musica · 06/03/2003 20:23

Don't really want to enter into this debate - never been a smoker - and I know that because one thing is harmful it doesn't mean you shouldn't do another, but I did hear on the BBC last week or so ago that it had been discovered that even small amounts of alcohol affected the foetus - they did a test where they held a buzzer to the mum's bump, and in mothers where they had drunk no alcohol, the foetus moved away, whereas in mothers who had drunk lightly the foetus was less responsive.

There was also the following news item.

BBC

Tinker · 06/03/2003 20:29

Smoking and drinking coffee are meant to prevent you getting Parkinson's disease though

lucy123 · 06/03/2003 20:36

hear, hear, Tamz77.

I know several good mothers who smoked throughout pregnancy (one heavily)with no ill effects.

(I know that's only anecdotal evidence, but I wanted to counter the anecdotal evidence below).

really must give up though.

musica · 06/03/2003 20:41

Newsitem2

Here's the other item.

Carla · 06/03/2003 22:35

Tamz77 - just out of interest - what do you do? (for a job, or, perhaps, what did you do?)

fallala · 06/03/2003 23:36

Of course plenty women in peak health have preterm babies and of course plenty heavy smokers have lovely perfect babies .
That goes without saying but is far from the point, which is you are increasing the chance of your baby having problems by smoking.
It's like saying " my granny smoked forty a day till the day she died at 109 years old and she didn't get cancer " as if that offered any counter argument that smoking causes cancer.

FWIW the person I was talking about at the start of this thread is wealthy and well educated.

And you can't actually say smoking has NOT affected your apparently healthy child as you don't know how much healthier/brainier it might have been if you had not smoked.

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SofiaAmes · 06/03/2003 23:54

Tamz77, an unborn baby shouldn't have rights that overrule those of the mothers.....that's quite a stance....glad I'm not your child.

And the idea that "no-one expects an alcoholic or heroin addict or compulsive gambler to just stop" somehow makes it ok to smoke while pregnant is really strange. Does that mean it's ok to do heroin while pregnant because it is so addictive that you can't just stop and to take that one step further, is it the mother's right to do heroin regardless of the rights of her unborn child?
p.s The only women I know who smoked in large amounts during pregnancy were in fact low income, but the accuracy of your description ends there. They knew of the dangers they were posing to their unborn babies, but didn't even want to quit. They don't work and their (free) houses are larger than mine. And KFC is not cheaper than 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, it's just easier.

mum2toby · 07/03/2003 07:56

Tamz77 WELL SAID..... don't know about the last sentence though (perhaps a wee bit harsh), but for the most part of your post I agree entirely! The part about breastfeeding is SOOO true!

Fallala - nobody is perfect, most people have bad and unhealthly habits. What if, what if, what if..... what if I'd breastfed my ds, would he still have excema??? Am I, therefore to blame for that??

Incidentally i do fully intend to have given up smoking by the time I plan child number 2... I think that is a more realistic approach rather than expecting women to go 'cold turkey' from the second they find out they are pregnant!

forest · 07/03/2003 10:07

I think it is the responsibility of the mother to protect her unborn baby no matter what and to say any different is just plain selfish. You can try and justify to yourself as much as you want that you are not really doing any harm or whatever else people have said but IMO you are just burying your head in the sand.
On a personal note I was a daily cannibas smoker, a heavy drinker and consumer of Class A drugs when I found out I was pregnant. I gave everything up as I could not bear the idea that my selfish behaviour could damage my unborn baby. I could never of forgiven myself if I thought I had contributed to some birth defect. That thought was enough to make me stop. To this day dh still goes on about how impressed he is that I just gave everything up but to me I had no choice - my unborn child was the most important thing.

Batters · 07/03/2003 10:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

prufrock · 07/03/2003 12:44

Well done forest.

Tam77 - no I don't agree that it's often difficult to feel any significant sense of duty towards your unborn. I fully expected that her rights overrode mine from prior to conception. I know this is going to sound harsh, but if you aren't going to put your babies needs before your own, why have one?

Tortington · 07/03/2003 13:11

didnt i say someone point me to a fight? you bunch of nasties - here it is and no one told me!

how judgemental you all are. and sofiamies - the way you phrase things is terrible and offensive - even though i do agree with some of your points.

oh and that "free" house those no good benefit claiming smoking people get... thats bigger than yours....well why dont you live in one - i guarentee ( working in the social housing sector) that you can get a lovely 3 bedder on an estate in manchester in a week or two, for a rent of about £45 - if you want to pay..or why not go on the social if its that so damned good?, so the choice is there sofiamies, why dont you go rent one of these nice big houses? in a shit poor area with low employment and high substance abuse rates and low educational achievements, high crime rates - but hey - on the social thats the life eh? all that "free money" and "fee housing"! give me strength!! - i have a choice whether to live in social housing - or not - many people dont have that choice - its not like smoking which is a choice.

how easy it is to judge - isnt there a commandment here rhuby? help me out babe i cant remember

Batters · 07/03/2003 13:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Tigger2 · 07/03/2003 16:05

Custardo, very to the point, and well said , this is someone (me) who smoked 40 a day to stopping without any cutting down. Used the patches though, and my youngest was 5 when I stopped last May.