Smoking in pregnancy

[GeraldineMumsnet]

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I may well be smug and officious about some things, haven't searched my conscience recently...

"i don't know a single person who went through pregnancy"

You do now - me

I never touched a drop (although did get extremely high on Vitamin C after going through about 8 cartons of fruit juice at a party as I wasn't drinking alcohol and was the only person drinking the juice )

Which is slightly ironic seeing as though I did smoke through DS3's pg.

should have said... 'except me' as with dd and ds i never had a drop to drink

this time i've had a half glass of champagne on 2 seperate occasions so not as well behaved but it's weird how me not drinking is viewed as weird even though it's dubious how safe it is for the baby for me to drink even a little

i still drink coffee and tea every day and weirdly that's not even noticed by anyone, despite caffeine being possibly as bad as smoking for the baby depending on which studies you read.

i'm not argueing that smoking when pregnant is ok, it's not and i feel appalling about the fact that i've never been able to stop completely.... but it does irritate me that mothers who smoke are villified and condemned to such an extent when plenty of women do equally dangerous things to their bodies when pregant and it's considered perfectly ok.

oh I never even knew that caffeine was "bad" for you in pg, and for the first 4 months of DS1's pg I was drinking nothing but black cofffee (we were totally skint, couldn't afford to buy milk or sugar but had a massive jar of cheap (nasty) coffee in).

I was mortified when we back to the UK and I discovered I shouldn't have been drinking it (though continued to drink white coffee, but in smaller quantities).

Done

Done. I quit before TTC, for the first and only time, as I knew I'd make excuses about it being too hard to quit if I waited until I was pregnant.

I didn't have a drop of alcohol with DD and same with this pregnancy as well (21 weeks these days)

I don't know about UK, but where I live, people are just as judgmental about drinking pregnant women as smoking ones.

What VS said re social unacceptability of certain things being a good thing.

I've read most of the thread, and I know this may be unpopular, but if we as women expect to be able to decide whether or not fathers are named on birth certificates dependant on their behaviour (although I do appreciate that many women are forced into situations not of their choosing) and all the many other 'my body, my choice' scenarios that arise ; surely we are able to take this on the chin and accept that it's not misogyny to require these same women to accept responsibility for their choices during pregnancy?

I speak as a bottle-a-night red wine drinker who took fright at her first, unexpected, pregnancy, and foreswore alcohol immediately after discovery, subsequently realising her 'stress-reliever' was actually border-line addiction.

I think full-on condemnation may not be helpful, but I think we have to accept our choices and their consequences without shouting 'no fair' when judgement ensues.

so you were "border-line" addicted...

many smokers are addicted, and often there are "external" things going on in their lifes which means despite them knowing and fully understanding the risks that they're putting their unborn child at, and feel like absolute SHIT about it they can't give up their addiction.

I've never been in the grips of genuine addiction, and I know an addict has no choices, and that probably limits my empathy.

I have an admittedly knee-jerk reaction against the concept of demanding choice, without accountability.

The thing is though, this is a matter of increasing a small risk of damage to a slightly less small risk of damage. Not a simple equations of 'smoke and your baby will be asthmatic'. And the key factor (as cited in the study linked to ) is genetic.
I doubt there's much sympathy for the view that women should all be screened for possible genetic defects at puberty and then socially condemned for getting PG (or forcibly sterilised maybe, or made to abort) if they have a risk of passing on certain genetic defects. Life is not risk free. The reason so much of the bullying of pregnant women is unfair and stupid is that it's not based on logic, it's based on a low-level prejudice against allowing women autonomy.

Public condemantion definately was a positive in making sure I managed to stop smoking whilst pregnant

and as smoking when preganant is not good for the baby and may be bad that surely is a good thing for that child.

sod whether the mother feels a bit judged. Get over it, you want to smoke fine. But as a result of potential harming your baby you get a few black looks. so what. If you are happy enough to put up with the potential risk to your child you surely are able to cope with the odd tut.

SGB, there is a huge difference between avoidable and unavoidable risk.
Taking drugs, smoking, bungee jumping and horseriding are all avoidable so should be stopped.

OMG, you mean I should have withdrawn from three-day eventing the minute I got p/g? Why did nobody tell me?!

They didn't want you to feel guilty.

VSL thing is with a lot of pregnancy-policing is that it assumes that all PGs are planned and expected and that women have nothing else to do but monitor themselves. Plenty of mothers either weren't actively TTC or not thinking about it at all when it happened and therefore spent the first month or so happily having lives. The heavy guiltmongering just means these women have unnecessarily miserable pregnancies. And it's always always the things that women might enjoy or do for their own benefit that are so stigmatised - there's not very much about skipping the housework because some cleaning products are not that beneficial if inhaled, or not walking through the town centre when the traffic is belching petrol fumes at you - and NEVER anything about persuading your partner to moderate his habits despite at least as much evidence of risk from fathers drinking/smoking/taking drugs before conception or in the home when a woman is PG.

Well, both when I was PG with DS1 and after he was born there was an awful lot said about my XP being a smoker as well as myself.

AFAIK women are advised not to lift heavy things in pregnancy and that isn't really a fun thing.

As for the 'first month or so' is that not the time when it is safest to do many for these things as the 'baby' is not yet formed and there is no placenta to cross through? (Sorry, I know it's more scientific than that but it's late and I'm tired!)

Well, I smoked and drank while PG, fairly heavily for the first 8 weeks at least (didn't know I was PG) and then quite a lot less for the rest of it but still did. And lifted heavy things, and ate some Camembert and Gorgonzola at one point. DS was born slightly overdue, at a good healthy weight, is now 4 with no asthma and no more coughs and colds (in fact slightly less now he's got over the first year of nursery/playgroup/building an immune system) than the rest of the kids we know. And he's widely regarded as advanced for his age/extra bright.
Of course, anecdotal evidence for no harm done should carry the same weight as anecdotal evidence for harm done ie not that much. It is not, of course, ethically possible to do a proper controlled double-blind study on either smoking or drinking in pregnancy so what all the fuss boils down to is increased risks (from very small to small, mostly), a strong possibility of the key factor being genetic rather than actually due to maternal behaviour - oh, and a general societal wish to control women.

"thing is with a lot of pregnancy-policing is that it assumes that all PGs are planned and expected and that women have nothing else to do but monitor themselves"

Err.. no. Planning has nothing to do with it, and being busy with work or otherwise has nothing to do with it. You get BFP at some (early) point, and you stop then and there. It doesn't take time. You just don't light another cigarette.

DD wasn't planned, and I was working in investment banking at the time (so not much time). In the weeks following her conception, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes & averaging a bottle of wine per day (Christmas holidays), and then skiing down red slopes while again smoking and drinking through the day (around New Year).

Yet I stopped smoking & drinking alcohol when I saw BFP and it wasn't because of a "general societal wish to control women" I didn't see it as a choice. It was an unnecessary and avoidable risk for my baby.

Well Cote, you made your decision. Other women might decide that the risks are acceptable. It's up to them what they do, not other people.

done

But the risks aren't their risks, surely that's the point.
If you decide whether or not to play Russian roulette with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, extreme sports, whatever those risks are YOURS to choose. It will be YOU that suffers the main problems associated with those risks.

When you decide not to eliminate those risks for ANOTHER PERSON, a BABY, then it's selfish, pure and simple. I guarantee that we wouldn't have this same argument about mothers who continue to take heroin whilst pregnant, especially not if you were shown a baby going through cold turkey so why is smoking more acceptable?

am highly amused at the concept of anyone being fecked about a pregnant woman doing heavy lifting

3 pregnancies, 2 of which i didn't drive for and during all of them i've repeatedly had to haul heavy shopping about, drag bags of coal about the place, haul heavy toddlers about, etc.

no one has ever offered to help me, not once, so if i get so bloody stressed doing that that i end up having a fag do you really think i care what public opinion of me is?

i have stood on buses and not been offered a seat, for that matter when preg with ds i often had to struggle onto a bus with dd, buggy and bags of shopping and not only got no help but stood the whole way home trying to hang onto them all.

people aren't concerned about the damaging things i have to do, they'd certainly never in a million years offer to help so that i wouldn't have to do them. so what right has anyone to condmen me for smoking here and there when i do far more dangerous things on a daily basis and no one gives a stuff because it might require them to lift a hand to help?

When pg I have been offered loads of help, not one delivery driver has ever said anything short of 'where do you want this you can't carry it in your condition' .

As for things you have to do, why do you have to do them? Why can't your partner or a friend or a family member? Do you really need to go on the bus with two children and the shopping when pregnant?

Sorry, but these are things you chose to do yourself, no-one forced you to do them. However smoking whilst pg you are forcing your child to be at risk.

done