HARM CAUSED BY SMOKING BY PREGNANT WOMEN

OR FROM THEIR EXPOSURE TO SECONDHAND SMOKE

Numerous scientific studies have established that smoking by pregnant women, or their regular exposure to secondhand smoke, dramatically increases the risk of a range of health problems both to themselves and their offspring, including the following:

Smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke during pregnancy causes more serious risks to the survival and health of fetuses, newborns, and children than using cocaine during pregnancy. It is also a much more pervasive problem. Roughly one-fifth of all pregnant women, or over 400,000 per year, smoke -- and many more non-smoking pregnant women are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke because their husbands, partners, other housemates, or coworkers smoke.

Smoking by fathers prior to conception may also increases the risk of childhood cancers and mental retardation among their offspring, even when the mother does not smoke at all.

Parental or other household smoking after birth also increases the chances that children will suffer from smoke-caused coughs and wheezing, bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, potentially fatal lower respiratory tract infections, eye and ear problems, or injury or death from cigarette-caused fires. Each year, more than 280 children die from respiratory illnesses caused by their parents' tobacco use or from smoking-caused fires, and another 300 suffer from fire-caused injuries. According to a 1997 study, exposure to secondhand smoke also leads to over 500,000 physician visits for asthma and 1.3 million visits for coughs, and to more than 115,000 episodes of pneumonia, 14,000 tonsillectomies or adenoidectomies, 260,000 episodes of bronchitis, two million cases of otis media among children, and 5,200 tympanostomies.

Research studies estimate that the direct additional health care costs associated just with birth complications caused by pregnant women smoking or being exposed to secondhand smoke could be as high as $2 billion per year. More broadly, parental smoking has been estimated to cause direct medical expenditures of more than $4.5 billion per year to care for smoking-caused problems of exposed newborns, infants, and children, as well as to treat birth complications

When a woman smokes the chemicals in the smoke enter her bloodstream and pass directly into her baby's body. 

The effect of nicotine and smoking on your body…..AND YOUR BABY is extremely damaging.

Nicotine is a poison and taken in large doses could kill a person by paralyzing breathing muscles.

Resting heart rate of smokers increases 2-3 beats per minute.

Nicotine lowers skin temperature and reduces blood flow in the legs and feet.

Tobacco smoke contains at least 43 carcinogenic (cancer-causing) substances and thus is a direct cause of many kinds of cancer.

Cigarette smoke includes: tar, nicotine, cyanide, benzene, formaldehyde, methanol (wood alcohol), acetylene (the fuel used in welding torches), ammonia, and the poisonous gases nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide, which reduces the amount of oxygen available to the baby.

Smokers have a lower level of proper lung function than do non-smokers.

Studies indicate that the blood vessels in the umbilical cords of babies whose mothers smoked show the same types of damage seen in the blood vessels of adult smokers.

 

Babies exposed to nicotine in utero show behavioral abnormalities similar to those exposed to illegal drugs during pregnancy, according to a Brown University study of 56 babies at 48 hours old. The babies were "overly excitable, tense, showed signs of central nervous system and gastrointestinal distress, and possible withdrawal symptoms."

— Pediatrics, 111: 1318-1323.

So what if you just cut back but don't stop smoking?  Unless you cut back to practically nothing, your baby is still in harm's way.

 

Practically every pregnant Mom knows that her baby will be better off if she stops smoking. Almost every pregnant Mom wants to stop smoking.   However, the power of nicotine, the strength of the smoking habit, the stresses of the pregnancy, the feelings of guilt, etc. combine to make it extremely difficult to stop without help.   Because we want Babies to have the advantage of having a positive non-smoker Mom, any smoker who is a pregnant Mom will save $10 off our “Be a Positive Non-Smoker” group seminar.    Additionally, any pregnant Mom who attends our “Be a Positive Non-Smoker” seminar will receive a $30.00 discount from the regular cost of the HypnoBirthing® program.