Smoking During Pregnancy: Don"t Let the Baby Suffer
Smoking is highly addictive and causes major health problems.
Cigarette smoke is extremely harmful to the expectant mother and her unborn baby.
However, a large percentage of women continue to smoke during pregnancy.
Toxic chemical components, contained in cigarette smoke such as nicotine, carbon monoxide, and cadmium pass through the placenta and reach the fetus.
Sometimes the concentration of those compounds is even greater than that in the maternal blood.
Numerous scientific studies on the negative impacts of smoking during pregnancy state that regardless of the quantity of hazardous substances, the effects are always noxious.
Major risks of smoking during pregnancy include:
Moreover, smoking doubles the woman's risk of miscarriage.
Luckily, the harmful effects of smoking are reversible.
Women who stop smoking even by the sixth month of pregnancy are likely to have normal babies with a similar birth weight to those of non-smokers.
Cigarette smoke is extremely harmful to the expectant mother and her unborn baby.
However, a large percentage of women continue to smoke during pregnancy.
Toxic chemical components, contained in cigarette smoke such as nicotine, carbon monoxide, and cadmium pass through the placenta and reach the fetus.
Sometimes the concentration of those compounds is even greater than that in the maternal blood.
Numerous scientific studies on the negative impacts of smoking during pregnancy state that regardless of the quantity of hazardous substances, the effects are always noxious.
Major risks of smoking during pregnancy include:
- Slow fetal growth - a high concentration of the deadly carbon monoxide reduces the oxygen supply to the fetus thus slowing its development.
By causing the heart to beat faster and narrowing the blood vessels, nicotine reduces the amount of oxygen and nutrients to the baby.
Cadmium blocks the action of the vital element zinc.
Low levels of zinc are associated with developmental delays. - Fetal malformations - some of the birth defects associated with smoking are heart defects, gastroschisis, limb defects, clubfoot, etc.
- Fetal death - perinatal mortality is significantly higher with smoking mothers.
- Mental retardation - nicotine intake during pregnancy may lead to delayed mental development of the child.
It may cause learning problems, affecting memory and the IQ. - Low birth-weight in babies - recent research suggests that the low weight of babies at birth is due to maternal smoking, rather than lack of sufficient food.
The risk of giving birth to an underweight baby with smoking mothers increases between 3 and 4 times.
The average weight of these babies is about 200g less than the weight of babies born to nonsmokers.
Moreover, smoking doubles the woman's risk of miscarriage.
Luckily, the harmful effects of smoking are reversible.
Women who stop smoking even by the sixth month of pregnancy are likely to have normal babies with a similar birth weight to those of non-smokers.
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