Smoking can harm a woman’s health and smoking during pregnancy can lead to pregnancy complications and serious health problems in newborns. The more a pregnant woman smokes, the greater the risk to her baby. However, if a woman stops smoking by the end of her first trimester of pregnancy, she is no more likely to have a low birth weight baby than a woman who never smoked. Even stopping during the third trimester can still improve the baby’s growth.
The problems with smoking during pregnancy include:
Risks to the baby
- Low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams) carries a range of grave health risks for children. Babies who were undernourished in the womb face a greatly increased risk of dying during their early months and years. Those who survive have impaired immune function and increased risk of disease; they are likely to remain undernourished, with reduced muscle strength, throughout their lives, and suffer a higher incidence of diabetes and heart disease in later life. Children born underweight also tend to have a lower IQ and cognitive disabilities, affecting their performance in school and their job opportunities as adults.
- Premature birth – less than 37 weeks of gestation.
- Miscarriage and stillbirths
- Learning and behaviour problems – associated with premature birth and low birth weight.
- Increased incidence of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)
- May undergo withdrawal-like symptoms. The babies appear to be more jittery and difficult to soothe than babies of non-smokers
- Suffer from more lower-respiratory illnesses (such as bronchitis and pneumonia) and ear infections than other babies.
- Some kinds of birth defects, particularly cleft lip and cleft palate (abnormalities of the mouth that need to be corrected by surgery).
Pregnancy complications
- Placental problems - including placenta previa (low-lying placenta that covers part or all of the opening of the uterus) and placental abruption (in which the placenta peels away, partially or almost completely, from the uterine wall before delivery). Both can result in heavy bleeding during delivery that can endanger mother and baby.
- Premature rupture of the membranes (PROM) (when the sac inside the uterus that holds the baby breaks before labor begins). When this occurs before 37 weeks of pregnancy it often results in the birth of a premature baby.
The good news is that the problems in pregnancy can be overcome by quitting smoking. This is best undertaken before the pregnancy – but stopping at any stage during the pregnancy will have a benefit for the mother and baby. If you are pregnant or are wanting to become pregnant then now is the time to stop.
