Smoking and Pregnant

Facts About Smoking During Pregnancy

Numerous scientific studies indicate that smoking by pregnant women, or their regular exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, also known as secondhand smoke, dramatically increases the risk of a range of health problems both to themselves and their babies, including the following:

1. spontaneous abortions
2. ectopic pregnancies
3. other birth and delivery problems
4. fetal brain damage
5. growth retardation/low birth weight
6. lower or higher than normal infant blood pressure
7. problems requiring neonatal intensive care
8. infant death from perinatal disorders
9. sudden infant death syndrome
10. mental retardation
11. respiratory disorders during childhood
12. Attention Deficit Disorder
13. other learning and developmental problems
14. behavioral problems, violence, and criminality
15. smoking during adolescence
16. various adult health problems
17. cancer-causing agents in infants’ blood: potentially carcinogenic mutations; and childhood leukemia

Effects of smoking while pregnant

Smoking in pregnancy can affect your baby, not just before birth, but also in the future. Here are some of the effects of smoking while pregnant.

Smoking raises the levels of carbon monoxide in your bloodstream. This reduces the amount of oxygen available to your baby.

When you smoke, harmful chemicals reach your baby.

Nicotine constricts the blood vessels on your side of the placenta, which means oxygen is passed over less effectively to the baby.

The result is the baby grows less well than he might have done, and he’ll be born lighter than otherwise. This might make a great difference to his health at birth.

There are also effects on brain development and on the general health of your baby, which have been shown to last into childhood, and even beyond. There is also a great deal of evidence that men who smoke when their partners are pregnant also affect the baby’s health - whether or not the woman smokes herself.

What do I need to know about Smoking and Breastfeeding?

1. Smoking can cause problems if the mother breastfeeds her baby. Nicotine is a drug that is passed to the baby in her breastmilk, and can cause nausea, colic, cramping and diarrhea in the baby.
2. Smoking may reduce milk supply and interfere with the let-down response
3. Even formula-fed infants of mothers who smoke excrete nicotine and cotinine (a nicotine by-product) in their urine.
4. For mothers who smoke, it is recommended that they abstain from smoking for two hours before nursing. This means quitting for mothers of newborns.
5. Mothers who smoke should smoke outside, away from the baby.
6. Absorption of nicotine by infants is greater from the respiratory tract than from breast milk.
7. The benefits of breastfeeding may outweigh the risk of some nicotine exposure.