How smoking during pregnancy affects you and your baby
"Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies. Doctors seen the complications far too many times: babies born prematurely, babies born too small, babies who die before they can be born at all. In his view, pregnancies would be safer and babies would be healthier if pregnant smokers could somehow swap their habit for a serious disease such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
"I can control
those conditions with medications,". But when a pregnant woman smokes, says, nothing can protect her baby from danger.
Why is it so dangerous to smoke during pregnancy?
Cigarette
smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including truly nasty things like
cyanide, lead, and at least 60 cancer-causing compounds. When you smoke during
pregnancy, that toxic brew gets into your bloodstream, your baby's only source
of oxygen and nutrients.
While none of those 4,000-plus chemicals is good for your baby (you would never
add a dollop of lead and cyanide to his strained peaches), two compounds are
especially harmful: nicotine and carbon monoxide. These two toxins account for
almost every smoking-related complication in pregnancy.
The most serious complications — including
stillbirth, premature delivery, and low birth weight — can be chalked up to the
fact that nicotine and carbon monoxide work together to reduce your baby's
supply of oxygen. Nicotine chokes off oxygen by narrowing blood vessels
throughout your body, including the ones in the umbilical cord. It's a little
like forcing your baby to breathe through a narrow straw. To make matters
worse, the red blood cells that carry oxygen start to pick up molecules of
carbon monoxide instead. Suddenly, that narrow straw doesn't even hold as much
oxygen as it should.
How will smoking affect my baby?
A
shortage of oxygen can have devastating effects on your baby's growth and
development. On average, smoking during pregnancy doubles the chances that a
baby will be born too early or weigh less than 5 1/2 pounds at birth. Smoking
also more than doubles the risk of stillbirth.
Every cigarette you smoke increases the risks to your pregnancy. A few
cigarettes a day are safer than a whole pack, but the difference isn't as great
as you might think. A smoker's body is especially sensitive to the first doses
of nicotine each day, and even just one or two cigarettes will significantly tighten blood
vessels. That's why even a "light" habit can have an outsize effect
on your baby's health.
How smoking affects your baby:
Weight and size
On average, a pack-a-day habit during pregnancy will shave about a half-pound
from a baby's birth weight. Smoking two packs a day throughout your pregnancy
could make your baby a full pound or more lighter. While some women may welcome
the prospect of delivering a smaller baby, stunting a baby's growth in the womb
can have negative consequences that last a lifetime.
Body and lungs
Undersize babies tend to have underdeveloped bodies. Their lungs may not be ready to work on their own, which means they may spend their first days or weeks attached to a respirator. After they're breathing on their own (or even if they did from the start), these babies may have continuing breathing problems — because of delayed lung development or other adverse effects of nicotine. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are especially vulnerable to asthma, and have double or even triple the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Undersize babies tend to have underdeveloped bodies. Their lungs may not be ready to work on their own, which means they may spend their first days or weeks attached to a respirator. After they're breathing on their own (or even if they did from the start), these babies may have continuing breathing problems — because of delayed lung development or other adverse effects of nicotine. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are especially vulnerable to asthma, and have double or even triple the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Heart
Babies
whose mother smoked in the first trimester of pregnancy are more likely to have
a heart defect at birth.
In
a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in
February 2011, these babies' risk of having certain types of congenital heart
defects was 20 to 70 percent higher than it was for babies whose moms didn't
smoke. The defects included those that obstruct the flow of blood from the
right side of the heart into the lungs (right ventricular outflow tract
obstructions) and openings between the upper chambers of the heart (atrial
septal defects).
Researchers
analyzed data on 2,525 babies who had heart defects at birth and 3,435 healthy
babies born in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., between 1981 and 1989.
Brain function
Smoking during pregnancy can have lifelong effects on your baby's brain.
Children of pregnant smokers are especially likely to have learning disorders, behavioral
problems, and relatively low IQs.
Behind
all these grim statistics lies an incredible opportunity: You can give your
baby a huge gift by giving up your habit — the sooner the better. Ideally, you
should give up smoking before you conceive. For one
thing, you'll have an easier time getting pregnant. (Smoking lowers the chance
of conceiving during any particular cycle by about 40 percent.) You also won't
have to struggle with quitting at a time when you should be thinking about
other things, like eating well, exercising, and preparing for
your baby's birth.
Of
course, not everybody manages to plan that far ahead. But if you're still
smoking when you discover you're pregnant, it's not too late. Immediately
taking steps toward quitting can hugely benefit your baby.
A
study published in the August 2009 journal Obstetrics
and Gynecology found
that expecting moms who quit in the first trimester actually raise their odds
of delivering a healthy full-term, full-size baby to about the same as that of
a nonsmoker. Moms who quit in the second trimester improved their odds,
too, but not as much.
After weeks 14 to 16, fetuses should be greedily
putting on weight. If you're still smoking at that stage, your baby's growth
will start to lag. But as soon as you quit, your baby will start getting the
oxygen he needs to grow. By the time you have your next ultrasound, your doctor should be able to see
a significant change in your baby's growth rate. Even if you're smoking at 30
weeks or beyond, you can still give your baby several weeks to put on weight as
quickly as possible. It's as easy — and as difficult — as throwing away your
cigarettes and never lighting up again.
Even though you're aware of the dangers of smoking, it's not always easy to
give up the habit. The pull of nicotine can overwhelm your good intentions and
even override your devotion to your child. That's why you shouldn't try to quit
on your own. Talk to your doctor about different ways to quit. Ask
your partner and other people around you for support. Use our community groups to get help from other expecting moms
who've quit. You have to be able to count on other people. After all, there's
somebody counting on you.
+(1).jpg)
