Smoking in pregnancy

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Please can you do our super-quick survey - one question! thank you

but edam what about those of us who smoked for years tried and tried to stop.

Then got pregant and realised that our actions may harm our child and get over how difficult it is to quit and just do it.

I smoked for 19 years before I got preganant I had been hyponotised/used patches/acupuncture but at the end of the day I smoked because I wanted to.

But when I got pregnant (which took a while) nothing was more important than the health of my baby so I quit smoking. end of.

Well done you. But I find it's a good general principle in life not to assume that everyone can do the things I find easy, or that I can do everything other people find easy.

(especially the second... am starting driving lessons yet again on Tues. Sigh...)

I promise you there wasn't anything easy about it

ps passing your driving test first time is just showing off

WHAT ABOUT HEROIN?
Would we really be having this same debate if it was HEROIN that mothers were taking rather than smoking cigarettes?

Would we fuck.

done

I wouldn't condemn a heroin addict - I'd just be terribly sad and hope she had access to all the services and support she needed to get off drugs.

What if the heroin addict didn't want any help or services and didn't really want to hear any of it.
I've worked in a pregnancy addiction clinic [only an afternoon a week, but over 5 years] and there is an assumption pregnant heroin or crack users want to give up.
Sadly often the thing that pushes/pushed them to use [history of abuse/violence/mental illness/chaotic life/using partner] isn't going away any time soon so the user is still very motivated to use/escape. I've met a whole heap of users who don't want to stop feeling the way the drug makes them feel.

Apparently giving up any addiction has the same requirements -
There has to be acceptance of the risk, then rejection of the risk, willingness to battle the addiction to avoid the risk, willingness to effect a change through whatever personal hard work is required, willingness to accept help from others to achieve the goal if required.
That's a massive amount of mental hard work.
My stepdad has just done it as his lung cancer was cleared through surgery alone [early referal by a shit hot GP] and he can't believe his luck. His grand daughter has just got our of ICU age 2 following a viral illness and he says he feels so lucky and honoured there is no way he'll risk missing her get well for the sake of smoking. So he has reached the acceptance and rejection. He is currently doing the hard work or resisting the urge.

I think it's a mistake to try to separate out people's personal circumstances from their innate tendency towards addiction. If you have someone who experiences addiction quite intensely, but is very motivated to quit and has a lot of personal support and relatively few stresses to deal with, she will probably manage to quit. But take the same person and put her in stressful personal circumstances and she will probably struggle.

For instance, I know someone who chain-smokes - has done for years. He has seen a close relative die of lung cancer and himself experiences cluster headaches (wickedly painful) that are the direct result of his smoking. He also has long-running mental health problems and experiences bouts of intense depression. Despite all of the very good and compelling reasons he has to stop, and all of the help that the NHS has offered him, he has yet to manage it.

I don't see what's so hard to comprehend about that.

Edam - I would condem women who take heroin whilst pregnant or whilst caring for children I've worked with many and the effects on their children is fucking awful.

Methodone users aint that great parents either ime.

What is the point of all this condemnation. It's utterly counter-productive. Unless it is your intention to make people feel even worse about themselves.

If you read the beginning of the thread policywonk I said that a form of condemnation, i.e. total social unacceptance would benefit. We can see an example of this in the way drink driving has changed in the last twenty years.

Policy - the point in it is to make people realise it's not right.

Many of the women I know who are heroin/methodone users associate mainly with other users, therefore they can justify to themselves that it is ok to do it. Humans do this by nature; they always look at those around them to see how they are, so I have women say 'but I'm only a bag a my mate is on 3 and she's got 2 kids' ...

But the effects on their children is terrible, by far the worst neglect cases I have come across are heroin users.

'I'm only on a bag a day... my mate is on 3'

Sorry, but I don't think either of those reasons stack up.

It's not analogous to drink-driving, because deciding to get a taxi home instead of driving is not the same as quitting smoking. And I doubt that there can be very many women who smoke duing pregnancy who don't know that it's risky.

If someone is struggling with addiction, making them feel crap about themselves does nothing whatsoever to help them with the addiction. In fact you could well argue that it pushes them deeper into addiction by damaging their self-esteem still further.

What is needed is far more resources for detox centres which decent counselling and aftercare services and to stop giving out methadone which is frigging harder to come off than smack.

So many of the drug clinics just seem to be aimed at getting people on to methadone. And not looking at any of the root causes.

And when these women are pregnant they need to be told in no uncertain terms the damage they are doing and also the likelihood that they will lose their kids to SS.

back on smoking it does work, because the fact that smoking is now social less and less acceptable means that people smoke less pregnant or not and the condemnation means that they are less likely to go and smoke in public,

therefore they smoke less and therefore the potential damage to their child is less

also if all of your friends gave up when they got pregnant you are more likely to yourself.

But if everyone was like hey smoking when pregnants fine, they people would be more likely to smoke as it was deemed acceptable.

That rings bells here too noonki. The justification by comparison.

And probably with all addictive behaviour do you think? Is this the same rationale as 'I smoke but no one's perfect and eats 100% organic so to have a failing is ok' or is that over simplifying it. I dunno.

If it was less socially acceptable and the risks were much, much more publicised (just as drink driving ~ which for some is not as simple as you think) then the head burying wouldn't be as easy as it is now.

the whole 'don't stress them, don't make them feel guilty' argument is rubbish. How about we stop telling people that it's not good to shake babies either? I mean if they are stressed and angry already we may just make it worse

I'm sure you're right that the condemnation has had an effect on the 'low-hanging fruit', if you like - those who are motivated to quit, well supported etc. (But those people might well have stopped anyway, especially once pregnant, because the public health messages are so well publicised now.) I don't think it will have any positive effect on those who are very entrenched, addicted smokers who find the idea of giving up absolutely defeating.

Is smoking while pregnant socially acceptable where you live, VS? I'd say it's generally regarded as unacceptable by most people. We're no longer living in a society that treats smoking casually (quite rightly IMO).

I just think that exhortation/condemnation is more likely to have an effect on those who would almost certainly have responded to entirely positive (ie non-condemnatory) public health messages anyway.

Those who are already socially marginalised, or struggling with addiction issues, won't take much notice. That's my guess anyway. And I think for those people, blanket condemnation could do more harm than good.

Are public health messages really that well publicized?
Honestly? I don't think people are all too aware of the risks tbh, if they were maybe they'd find them less possible to ignore.