Are you pregnant? Well, then that’s two good reasons to quit smoking. If you’re pregnant and smoking cigarettes, you’re smoking for two. When you inhale, you inhale nicotine, carbon monoxide and other chemicals, and these pass into your baby’s body. They can affect the chance of you having a healthy baby, and no baby should be forced to smoke.
Since lots of smokers have healthy babies, how great is the risk?
• Up to 14% of all premature births are caused by a mother’s smoking.
• Babies born to women who smoke during pregnancy are nearly a half-pound lighter on average than babies born to non-smokers.
• Those low-birth weight babies are subject to many more problems than normal weight babies.
• Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage and the risk of infant death. Clearly, the more you smoke, the greater the risk.
Here’s one I’ll bet you didn’t know. Your unborn baby doesn’t breathe in the womb as rapidly as we do in the air world, but he/she does begin to breathe at three months and continues with slow rhythmic respiratory movements until birth. This is the baby’s way of getting in shape to breathe more rapidly after birth. This early “in the womb breathing” develops the muscles of respiration. And knowing this, let me tell you that the effects of cigarette smoking are so immediate and so powerful that your baby’s practice-breathing movements slow down after you smoke just two cigarettes. The more cigarettes you smoke, the more you interfere with your baby’s preparation for life outside the womb.
Women’s Center- Lebanon, Ohio is a pregnancy resource center that offers support and solutions for unexpected pregnancies to women in the Warren County and surrounding areas in the state of Ohio. Women’s Center- Lebanon provides women with free pregnancy tests, ultrasound scans, prenatal vitamins, consulting on pregnancy decisions and an educational and material assistance program. To contact Women’s Center- Lebanon call 513-934-1777 or email info@womenscenterohio.com. You can make an appointment online by visiting www.womenscenterohio.com.
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