The dangers of smoking and second hand smoke are widely known. If you smoke during pregnancy, it only makes sense that those dangers would affect your unborn child as well. Yes, there have been studies and research performed on the subject. These studies show correlations between smoking during pregnancy and the effects on the babies. Smoking during pregnancy has been positively linked with many medical problems. Being exposed to second hand smoke was just as unhealthy for the unborn baby. Keep reading to learn about the serious consequences of smoking while pregnant.
Baby Shower Invitations is a huge area with many more sub-topics you can read about. It is really similar to other related issues that are important to people. When you smoke so does your baby.
Hundreds of chemicals are added to tobacco, including carbon monoxide and nicotine. The nourishment that your baby gets via placenta including oxygen, and whatever else is in your system from smoking gets transferred to your baby. It is known that cigarette makers put hundreds of chemical into the tobacco for various reasons. Some of them, such as formaldehyde, are known carcinogens that help to make the effects of nicotine almost immediately felt in your brain.
There is an interesting statistic involving infants whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. Babies with smoking mothers have a higher heart rate than those of babies whose mothers didn’t smoke. A baby born to a smoking mother will have a heart rate that is about 30% higher than a baby whose mother doesn’t smoke. This specifically about women who smoked while pregnant. Why this condition exists is difficult to pinpoint. Smoking prevents the baby from receiving the normal amount of oxygen which could be part of the cause of this condition.
While a significant percentage of low birth weight newborns is blamed on the mother smoking while pregnant, there are quite a few additional risks. A few of the other known risks include cerebral palsy, learning disabilities and retardation. Smoking while pregnant has been shown to contribute to the enormous amount of sudden death cases in infants.
A woman who smokes during pregnancy should find this very troubling.
At this time, we don’t completely understand the highly negative effects smoking during pregnancy can have on the baby. While we are mainly focused on the effects on the unborn baby, these same effects do not go away after childbirth. These consequences are far reaching and can affect the child well into adulthood. So you see, smoking during pregnancy has lifelong consequences on the child and many of which can be dire. Quitting smoking is vital to the baby and the mother for this reason.
