Pregnancy and smoking

Smoking is injurious to the health of the smokers, but when a pregnant lady smokes, it proves injurious not only for her, but for fetus also. There are several research and studies where it has been proven that exposure in smoking increases health risk for the mother as well as for the unborn child.

Alternatively, passive smoking can adversely affect a pregnant woman and her child’s health. The health risk factors get increased with the increased intensity of smoking.

The pregnancy complications due to smoking are ectopic pregnancy, unfortunate death of fetus in mother’s womb, miscarriage, complications in formation of placenta, premature bursting of membranes, and chance of development of premature labor. Any of these complications may prove fatal for the pregnancies as well as for the development of the baby.

When a pregnant lady smokes, for her each puff she deprives her fetus from inhaling oxygen and exposes the newborn’s delicate respiratory organ in the harmful chemical environment, which can be proven carcinogenic in long-term-effect.

Out of the wide list of damage of fetus by smoking, some major harmful effects are reduced supply of oxygen for respiration, chance of inadequate growth and insufficient development of brain, increased risk of formation of cleft lip and palate, and increased heart rate and the breathing movement of the baby gets significantly disturbed due to toxic presence of nicotine.

Smoking by the carrying mother impacts adversely on the delivery of the baby which is called “problems at birth”. The major problems of birth are chance of premature delivery of the baby, chance of miscarriage or neonatal death, too low body weight of fetus etc. These babies often suffer from sudden-infant-death-syndrome [SIDS] more in comparison to other normal babies, who are born under non-smoking environment.

Mothers with smoking habit face problems with breast feeding. The major impacts are the conduction of harmful elements in cigarette to internal organs of the fetus, gross reduction of vitamin-C content in breast milk due to smoking, and deterioration of breast milk quality and quantity etc.

Due to the smoking habit of mother a child may face problems in his later life like faulty lung function, probability of development of asthma, and low-birth-weight, etc.

Possibility of development of type-2 diabetes in the child, and childhood obesity are the other complications of the babies born under maternal smoking habit. Some babies face learning problem while in study due to harmful effect of nicotine on brain due adverse effect of smoking by the pregnant mother.