Thursday, December 2, 2010

Smoking During Pregnancy

Smoking mothers (and fathers too)can be unwittingly killing and maiming their children - born and unborn. There is a strong probability that smoking mothers are possibly sharing with their children lung cancer and many other similarly devastating diseases. Besides the above ugly facts, here are more unsettling reasons to think about while smoking. Smoking will not only damage your health, it will also damage the health of your unborn child:

# First of all, smoking makes it hard to conceive. Fertility in both men and women are heavily affected by nicotine and other substances that smoker consume. In women, smoking conflicts with the egg movement toward the fallopian tubes as well as the secretions that are produced during pregnancy. In men, it lowers the semen count, and also the motility of the sperm.

# Smoking affects the shape of the sperm making it incapable of penetrating the egg. Also smoking in many cases is the main cause for impotency in men as it interferes with the blood that provided to the penis.

# In some cases the placenta is instantly affected by smoking causing a miscarriage of the foetus, or death in the womb.

# Children born of smoking parents potentially get a low fertility syndrome and experience troubles from a great number of infertility problems. For instance, babies of smoking women will be most probably to be born premature and under weight. Also they have poor lung functions right from birth.

# Infants are also likely to have less developed vital organs than babies of non-smoking mothers. There is a strong probability that these babies have an undeveloped liver which will affect them throughout their lives.

# The babies of smoking women who smoked around a pack cigarettes a day are more likely to be sickly. Also these babies are twice as much inclined to die from 'sudden infant death' (SID) syndrome than the babies of non-smoking women

# The baby in the womb of a pregnant smoking lady gets its nicotine addiction even before he was born as its blood absorbs the nicotine that the mother’s blood shares with it; therefore it is more likely that when born and get older this youngster would become a smoker - and also get all smoking related diseases and problems.

Any one of the above should be persuasive enough to make any woman or man, who really want to have a healthy child to quit smoking - if not for yourself, then for future little miracle. Read the article again, and ask yourself are you really comfortable that you are consistently harming your child of your own free will? Get in touch with your doctor today and get help to quit smoking for good. You owe it to your child to be healthy and give them a great beginning to the start of their life.