Every pregnancy may be different, but as an aggregate smoking and drinking alcohol can have siginficant impacts upon fetal health. Both alcohol and nicotine readily cross the placental barrier, so a pregnant woman drinking or smoking is essentially doing the same thing as feeding an infant alcohol or putting a cigarette in it’s mouth, which I think everyone will agree is inadvisable.
Of the two (in moderation) I’d say that smoking is worse overall–there is a marked difference in birthweight, likelyhood of natal complications, childhood development, and chronic pediatric illness–but even moderate consumption of alcohol early in pregnancy correlates to retarded or delayed mental development. Later in pregnancy an occasional glass of wine isn’t much of a worry–it’ll deliver about the same amount of alcohol found in many children’s OTC medicines–but daily drinking, or any kind of binging is certainly ill-advised. The problem from cigarettes is more that it tends to be a very habitual thing. Many studies have indicated that regular consumption of even a moderate number of cigarettes a day increases the risk of cancer and chronic health problems, and it’s not much of a stretch to believe that it may very well cause problems in pre-natal development as well. A single, occasional cigarette, however, probably isn’t going to do any lasting harm.
Those harkening back to the good old days when pregnant women smoked like chimneys and drank like hard-boiled detectives need to take a gander at infant mortality and morbidity rates then and now. Even setting aside chronic health problems associated with smoking and drinking while pregnant, mortality and develment/birth problems were substantially worse in the past. It’s hard to isolate this exclusively to drinking and smoking since medical notions about what constituted a healthy pregnancy in the past have changed significantly (especially appropriate weight, correct dietary balance, and post-natal care) but in populations where drinking and smoking have been eliminated the rates of healthy births are substantially higher, even given that women today tend to have children later in life when natural complications are more likely.
Sorry, but this is utterly specious nonsense. First of all, air quality has improved dramatically practically everywhere in the the United States and Europe in the last three decades; we were less conscious of it because the nascent environmental movement was on the fringes rather than the morning news. Low-level smog was just taken as a granted in those days, unworthy of an advisory, and people who were susceptible to it just had to suffer. Second, the worst urban air quality in the world doesn’t begin to compare to the health effects from smoking, especially the likelyhood of developing smoking-related cancer or non-herditary emphysema. Smoking very clearly and dramatically correlates which much higher incidences of many chronic illnesses. It’s not “the straw that broke the camel’s back”; it’s the two ton load of gold bricks that caused the camel to sway and buckle. Portraying it as some almost incidental health hazard that is so marginal it doesn’t bear cutting out of a healthy lifestyle is fallacious and disingenous.
Every so often I have an urge to start a thread titled “Post a photo of your mom smoking while pregnant.” I never do, though, because I don’t have a picture of my mom smoking while pregnant. But I still kind of keep hoping that somebody will.
Firstly, this is IMHO, not GD. I know better than to go in there; I just don’t have the mind for it. So please ride me a little less fiercely.
Secondly, I am not arguing that smoking and drinking during pregnancy is good or harmless. Frankly, I think that no one should smoke tobacco outside of a ritual or ceremony, ever, and that any woman who is or could be pregnant shouldn’t drink one drop. But you just can’t say that without people screeching like harpies. This is a sensitive topic. Sometimes people are more willing to listen to you when you couch what you have to say and sand the edges off.
Even that is cultural and a factor of our time. My grandparent’s generation were known to mix whiskey or wine into the baby bottle to get the baby to sleep (and some of the people I know whose parents did this seem to have suffered no ill effects - graduated from Med School - maybe without the chianti in the bottle they would have won Nobel Prizes).
There was a study out when my kids were babies that showed mothers who drank in moderation during pregnancy (less than two or three drinks a week, but drank) had children who had HIGHER development scores at eighteen months than their non-imbibing peers. Its possible that alcohol in pregnancy, like alcohol in so much else in life, can actually be beneficial in moderation. The problem is that any benefit is rather moderate, and the downside of non-moderation can be pretty severe.
My Mom drank and smoked plenty with all 3 of us and no obvious damage but maybe my sense of direction or memory could be better… who knows? I don’t drink and quit smoking with each pregnancy but docs were recommending occasional drinks for various pregnancy related complaints at the time of my first pregnancy (1980). My OB doc at that time also had ashtrays and a big coffeeepot in the waiting room.
I worked in a detox unit where we would show an educational film daily about drug or alcohol use and consequences and then answer questions. One day we had more women than men on the unit (a rare circumstance indeed) so I decided to show the film on fetal alcohol syndrome (which had never been shown on detox before). The film showed clips of children with the full syndrome and of children with lesser consequences called fetal alcohol effect. *BIG* mistake! Three women (out of about 10) became hysterical because they realized for the first time that problems in their children were caused by their drinking. Denial is a big part of alcoholism, but I am often amazed at the almost psychotic nature of that denial in otherwise normal, intelligent people. It took all day and most of the staff members to get everybody calmed down.
So, while I think an occasional drink while pregnant is probably fine, I don’t know who is going to interpret that to mean “only 4 or 5 drinks a day”. Ergo, I advise all patients not to drink at all when pregnant.
I smoked during my pregnancy. It isn’t something I am at all proud of. I did cut down dramatically however…if that will save me from the fire pits of hell. My daughter was born premature and underweight, however, I was underweight when I got pregnant and had a hell of a time eating the last two months. I was ordered to put on two pounds a week or the doctor would take her out of me. I met his goal, then he told me he had hoped I would be able to gain 1lb a week. I was determined. I was told at the beginning of the pregnancy that I should gain 35lbs, which I did, but I probably needed to gain much more.
She was born very strong, very happy, nursed well and as best I can tell, was the easiest baby ever born, she certainly showed no signs of withdrawal or anything. I also had an epidural and will spearhead any petition to make them freely available (GOOD DRUGS!). I am not a drinker and frankly, I’ve seen the effects of FAS on children. It is terrifying.
Quitting smoking is one of the hardest things to quit. I was the sole breadwinner, working full time, long hours and was trying to support my husband through the dot-com crash. Turned out he was a drug addict the entire pregnancy. I spent the entire time trying to be supportive, keep our home, keep my health insurance and deal with a high risk pregnancy from the start. I guess I was selfish, inconsiderate and should be jailed or burned alive. But although I was thrilled to be pregnant, it was the toughest year of my life. I hope if I am fortunate enough to get pregnant again, I won’t have as much stress as I did then.
At 6 weeks I had bleeding and they weren’t sure she was viable. At 12 weeks my AFP test said she had a 1-100 shot of having downs syndrome. I had to have an amniocentesis to find out for sure. At 16 weeks, I got the results that she was normal. At 20 weeks, my car blew it’s radiator and cost $800 to replace. Ad naseum. When she was 4 weeks old, I found out our house was entering foreclosure and my husband had been a drug addict for the last year and we had nothing left.
Yep, I smoked. I am thrilled to death that my daughter apparently has not suffered for my sins.
Because really, she’s the greatest kid in the world.
My understanding also is that it isn’t clear to researchers and doctors exactly how much alcohol is the harmful level, so the safest bet is to say none at all.
That said, I once was actually drinking a beer as I watched the second line appear. That turned out to be my son The Bumblebee.
I announced that pregnancy to my husband by handing him the empty bottle and saying “Well that is the last one for me for the next 9 months.” Fun times.
I realize that you meant “big mistake” because of the aftermath, but I think that showing the film was a good thing - perhaps hard for some of the ladies to take - but good in that you were shining a light on the problem.
I don’t smoke. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I quit drinking for the first trimester. Since then I’ve had a couple of sips of my husband’s drink, but no full glasses of anything. I’ll probably scale up to an occasional glass of wine as I get further along.
My SIL smokes, and her doctor recommended that she cut down but not stop, because the shock of nicotine deprivation would be bad for the kid. THe kid’s a year and a bit, and is fine.
I have continued to eat ham, but I feel guilty and neurotic about it. :rolleyes:
Excerpt from link:
While the cause of SIDS is unknown, many potential risk factors have been identified such as premature birth and/or low birth weight, bed sharing, loose bedding and male sex. The most important risk factors to be aware of are
maternal smoking both before and after the child's birth
I’m not going to defend drinking and smoking by pregnant women, but I think we’d be better served by concentrating our energies on the distribution of wealth and adequate health care for all our citizens. If we, as a nation, were as outspoken about poverty and lack of availibility to health care I’m sure it would do much more for infant health/mortality than harping on one narrow issue.
Wouldn’t it be much more productive to find solutions to root causes, than to find a way of blaming one segment of the population?
A second on prioritizing viable, affordable health care for all pregnant women over anti smoking/drinking campaigns, but personally, I wouldn’t do either as long as there was any real chance of something screwing up my kids. Drugs and drinking just aren’t important enough to me and thankfully I’ve got no addictions.
I’d do my best to avoid L&D drugs too, though never having been pregnant I have no way of knowing how painful it is.
But then we wouldn’t be able to punish the bad women, and point our fingers at them, and absolve our society of any responsibility. This great nation was built on identifying, ostracizing, and punishing those bad people.
You’re right of course.
Anyway, it’s already been said pretty well in this thread, that the best dose of nicotine and alcohol for a pregnant woman is probably none. It is quite clear that, despite testimonials and anecdotes in this thread to the contrary (that is so not fighting ignorance), both alcohol and nicotine use raise rates of bad outcomes, in an apparent dose-related rise in risk.
Is there a safe dose for each substance? Maybe. Probably. But we don’t know if there for sure is, and we don’t know what that theoretical safe dose might be.
Ain’t it the truth Doc, ain’t it the truth!?
The emotional response is to lay blame, to find a scapegoat. It seems so satisfying. The logical response is to find a solution. If only we could instill some logic into the emotional thought process, maybe we could make some progress.
My turn for :rolleyes: . Bringing awareness to the health impacts of using alcohol and tobacco while pregnant is readily achievable, requires little in the way of social engineering or economic reform, and has had demonstratably beneficial outcomes for essentially no cost. In short, it’s low hanging fruit which produces a bountiful harvest.
Long term solutions involving an equitable division of wealth have escaped most developed nations (even Sweden and Denmark have had to concede that some social welfare services are too expensive to provide on the public krona) and while public health care in the United States is badly in need of reform, nobody seems to be able to agree what kind of changes to make, who should be the governing authority, and what ultimate form the system should take. This is fruit at the very top of the tree, and you’re probably going to break a lot of branches in order to get there. This isn’t something that is going to happen quickly or painlessly, and certainly doesn’t have the efficacy to deliver the same improvements in infant mortality and prenatal development that campaigns to educate the public on the hazards of drinking and smoking while pregnant have.
The US’ statistics on infant mortality are shockingly lower than most other developed nations, but given a finite amount of resources and political wherewithal you have to pick and choose the most effective avenue of improvement. Lowering the incidence of habitual use of alcohol and tobacco is a lot more concrete and viable in the here and now than a spurious, ill-conceived effort at reforming the medical system or some pie-in-the-sky plan for humanistic socialism which will be great once we can figure out how to make bureaucracy work and corruption minimal. I like the latter idea in concept, but don’t have much faith in the execution in the US at large; there’s too much inherent disconnect in incomes, too much regional variation in labor needs and value, and too many people with a vested interest in gearing a system toward their own favor.
You refute your own arguments. The answer is political will and the impetus is public opinion. That public opinion may be influenced by financial interest for awhile, but itr’s not without limits. The idea that we should blame the individual for not having the personal integrity, or incentive to obtain sufficient social/financial status to be in a position of providing adequate medical care for themselves and their dependants, is specious and the public will eventually recognize the fallacy of that argument.
If the opportunity were readily available then most would avail themselves of it. The old adage that “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer”, is alive and well in the U.S. today, and it’s a detriment to our continuing as a world superpower. As economic and political power continue to be held by fewer and fewer then the likelyhood of rebellion, in one form or another, will rise until revolution becomes a necessity and a reality.
It’s dangerously close to offtopic, but I feel I should have added the medical establishment’s take on weight gain during pregnancy.
'60s: “Don’t gain more than 20 pounds! No matter what!” I gained 7 or so pounds in the first couple of months and was admonished severely and threatened with a 1500-calorie diet if I continued to gain at that rate. I started the pregnancy weighing 103 and finished it weighing 119. (No wonder they didn’t tell women to quit smoking.)
'70s: 20-25 pounds considered okay, and not continually monitered. Literature from doctor’s office said in essence “This is not the time to go on a diet, but focus on fresh healthy foods.”
'80s: “You will gain around 30 pounds in a normal pregnancy, but don’t worry, after breastfeeding for two or three years you’ll be back to normal. 40 pounds? Well you started kind of slim, but let’s watch it.”
'90s: They looked for a nice steady weight gain. “Don’t even worry about it, we’ll tell you if we think something’s wrong.”
