I’d rip the cigarette from her hand and put it to her face, while screaming “How do you like them smokes now?!?!”
Nah. Like others who have replied, I’d just mind my own business.
Interestingly, a friend of mine tried to stir up some gossip by telling me she bumped into a former friend (I’d had a falling out with her a few years back) who is now heavily pregnant and pushing a toddler in a stroller and Miss (Mrs?) Preggers was chain smoking while they stopped to chat. When said friend told me about it, she was all “OMG, can you BUH-LEEEVE the trashiness of it? No wonder you stopped being friends with her!” It was obviously supposed to trigger some of my “Oh gee, stupid bitch is still a stupid bitch” reflex, but all I could do was shrug and say “Glad I didn’t have to see that.”
Even without the added drama that Whynot’s friend is going through - my OB advised me to cut down gradually over the course of my pregnacy rather than quit outright when I discovered that I was pregnant. This was over 20 years ago, but she said the same thing - that the stress of quitting was sometimes worse than actually smoking and that I should do what I could but not to worry about doing more.
I found out I was pregnant at 3 months and I had cut down to nothing at about 6 months.
Apparently that was too fast since my darling boy was almost 10lbs.
In the Balkans (where the OP is)…I don’t know, it would depend on the person and how well I knew them. People there don’t have as many scruples about telling strangers what to do there as Americans. Smoking really is omnipresent there, and people don’t seem to take the health risks very seriously.
I realize my verbs were all mixed up there. Just to be clear, that fetus is now 13 years old. Shockingly enough, no deformities or disabilities from his very extraordinary uterine experiences, and a whopping 9+ pounds at birth. They were very, very lucky.
I think if that’s your reasoning (general “you”, I get that you’re just sharing ideas here), and you feel compeled to step in to help the babies of strangers, then you can donate or give your time to the Y or Planned Parenthood or some other non-profit that works with pregnant women. Even if you just “Like” them on facebook, it’s probably going to do more good in the long run then agitating a pregnant woman whose medical history you know nothing about.
This is similar to what happened with a close friend of mine. Her partner had some sort of manic upswing combined with an affair, and my friend ended up homeless at 8 weeks pregnant. She lived with my husband and me until the baby was six months old. In any case, she was under so much stress with the abrupt end of her marriage and subsequent headgames from her (I try not to judge, but f’ing crazy) partner that her OB/GYN told her to just keep it under five cigs a day.
That didn’t stop some busybody confronting her outside of Target and making her cry, though.
WhyNot’s story reminded me of something a friend of mine told me when I was pregnant.
I was shocked at the huge list of no-no’s for pregnant women and I am one of those women who are pretty relaxed about most things. I try to learn why things are not recommended and them make up my own mind. I was at a friends bridal shower when I was about seven months pregnant, and I made myself a drink. Some of the people there were shocked, but then my friend came to my aide. She is a doctor and said that the most important part of development is the first trimester, and anyways crack addicts have healthy babies all the time. One drink is not going to hurt anything.
I wouldn’t say anything. You don’t know if thats her first cigarette in weeks.
Voted do nothing… but I do have a fantasy of carrying a water pistol and soaking smokers… any smokers, pregnant or not… just to extinguish the flames you understand.
When I found out that not only were certain kinds of fish out but so where deli meats and soft cheeses, I realized that either I was going to cheat when/if I ever got pregnant. Or go crazy.
I had anxiety attacks late in pregnancy. And I called my OB. They were horrible.
He said something like “I’d never tell you to drink during pregnancy, but we used to tell women who went through this to have a glass of wine. I will tell you that we have hundreds of years of experience showing us light drinking doesn’t mean FAS, and that any anti anxiety drugs I could give you haven’t been tested as safe for pregnancy.”
(That study on light drinking - there was on with the same results when my daughter was gestating - she is 11 now.)
Similarly, while smoking during pregnancy isn’t great, my mother, my husband’s mother, the vast majority of my girlfriend’s mothers, my aunts…almost everyone who gestated in the mid 1960s-mid 1970s smoked through there pregnancy. It might have not been ideal, but most of us really don’t show a lot of ill effects.
