1st Trimester
babymamamegs
member
Pregnancy & smoking
babymamamegs
member
So, I didn't find anywhere in the guidelines that this could not be discussed and I also didn't find any other thread that discusses it. I am a smoker.. very sad to say so. And when I found out I was pregnant a few days ago, my worst fear was quitting because I was afraid of the stress it .at have on my body and my new beautiful zygote. I am 4 weeks and 4 days today, I have severely cut down on my smoking, as in one a day maybe two. I read that as long as you quit within the first 3 months, your chances of birth defects dramatically decline. Any other mommies out there having the same issue? I know women. That smoke the entire pregnancy but I don't plan on doing so, and trying to find helpful tips and tricks on how to deal with the cravings, cut down even more or even not feel so bad about it. Anyone else in the same boat?
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Re: Pregnancy & smoking
If you can quit completely then that is what you should do. I would not be waiting until the end of 1st tri to try and make adjustments. Smoking is far worse on your baby than the stress of trying to quit.
If you cant quit completely, cut back as must as possible. Make sure you have a plan to distract you when you have a craving.
**** Formerly Snoflakes4eva****
**** Formerly Snoflakes4eva****
Smoking is one of the worst things that you can do while pregnant. Please speak with your doctor about the steps you need to take in order to quit completely. Even smoking one or two a day can still cause harm to your baby- some of which may be irreversible.
One tip I've heard from other moms is to cut the cigarettes. Like, in half and then down even more. So you are smoking less and less until you are not smoking at all. If you need help please talk to your OB. They can help you quit.
LFAF Summer 2016 Awards:
anyways, definitely try to quit completely. the stress of quitting my affect your child a tiny bit, but smoking throughout pregnancy would be worse, right? you can always speak with your doctor about this. guaranteed they have resources & options to help women who smoke & become pregnant. good luck!
Can you link me? Because I looked pretty far back
I realize it's difficult and you most likely want people to say 'one or two is fine' but it's not. I've been smoking since I was 14 years old and each time I've gotten that BFP I've quit cold turkey. And it sucks. Big time. I'm angry and I crave them and I hate it. But id rather go through the withdrawal than have my child end up with a birth defect that was 100% my fault.
did you search the 2nd Tri board as well? i think they might have been brought up on that board.
cutting back significantly is actually progress.. i have a feeling you have never struggled with any kind of addiction before.
Same! No I didn't check and didn't even think to! Thank you
No I have not, cigarettes is the only addiction I have ever known and I wish that I would have never picked it up but it happened
time for you to stop and leave this thread as you have nothing helpful to add. No one is saying it's okay the OP is taking the steps to quit all you are doing is being judgmental and unnecessarily harsh go back to your bmb if you can't be supportive.
Married: October 2014
TTC #1 since September 2015
hang In there and keep fighting you will get there!
Have you you talked to your dr's office? Sometimes there are support groups for quitting. Good luck!
TTC #1 - Nov '14
DS born 10/18
eventually the cravings will cease all together & then it's a mental marathon. You can do it. Hang in there.
LFAF Summer 2016 Awards:
Results Of the 417 participants, the prevalence of maternal and paternal smoking was 26.3% and 30.7%, respectively, and 13.4% of mothers were exposed to their partner’s smoke. One in three (n = 134, 32.1%) had a confirmed miscarriage at follow-up. Miscarriage was not associated with maternal smoking (30.6% for non-smokers versus 32.4% for smokers; P = 0.737) or paternal smoking (31.2% for non-smokers versus 32.8% for smokers; P = 0.763). A higher proportion of women exposed to their partner’s smoke experienced miscarriage (44.2% vs. 29.9%; Odds ratio=1.86, 95% CI=1.03–3.38; P = 0.038). The association remained even after adjustment for the mother’s own smoking (Adjusted odds ratio=2.22, 95% CI=1.12–4.40; P = 0.022).
https://jech.bmj.com/content/68/Suppl_1/A44.1.abstract
Result(s)
After adjustment for confounding factors, the following were independently associated with increased risk: history of miscarriage, repeated induced abortion, working night shifts, and frequent staying up late. Vitamin supplementation and regular physical activity reduced the risk of miscarriage. We did not find paternal age, alcohol consumption, or smoking status to be linked with early miscarriage.
https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(14)00151-4/abstract?cc=y=And because I need to add this one for good measure, I have bolded multiple parts I find relevant to understanding this article, followed by my comments in brackets.
Abstract
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to characterize the relationship between smoking and miscarriage {This means 'we looked at a huge group of other peoples' data. We did not go out, recruit, control, and observe our own participants} . We searched the PubMed database (1956–August 31, 2011) {Holy shit, really? You couldn't find any more recent data sets?} using keywords and conducted manual reference searches of included articles and reports of the US Surgeon General. The full text of 1,706 articles was reviewed, and 98 articles that examined the association between active or passive smoking and miscarriage were included in the meta-analysis. {Uhhh....what? Cherry picking your data much? Who the hell okay'd this for publication?!} Data were abstracted by 2 reviewers. Any active smoking was associated with increased risk of miscarriage (summary relative risk ratio = 1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16, 1.30; n = 50 studies), and this risk was greater when the smoking exposure was specifically defined as during the pregnancy in which miscarriage risk was measured (summary relative risk ratio = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.44; n = 25 studies). The risk of miscarriage increased with the amount smoked (1% increase in relative risk per cigarette smoked per day). Secondhand smoke exposure during pregnancy increased the risk of miscarriage by 11% (95% CI: 0.95, 1.31; n = 17 studies). Biases in study publication, design, and analysis did not significantly affect the results. This finding strengthens the evidence that women should not smoke while pregnant, and all women of reproductive age should be warned that smoking increases the risk of miscarriage.
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/7/807.short
For those of you who have made it this far in my post, thank you for indulging my tendency to actually look into the freaking research.
TLDR; Out of the recent articles that explicitly discuss the association between smoking and miscarriage, there is no positive correlation. Many other articles briefly mention smoking and miscarriage in their methods sections, but are not noted here because they also find no positive correlation and don't even bother to mention smoking and miscarriage in their discussion, results and analysis, or conclusion sections. There is one random article that discusses the cherry-picked, fucking ancient data of a whole bunch of other people and that does find a positive correlation between miscarriage and smoking. Most of the people I know who are involved in research and publication (which is kind of my goddamned job, thanks) would never let this kind of article through editorial or peer-review.
So, OP, talk to your doctor about how to quit quickly and successfully, good luck on quitting, and on behalf of your baby thank you for understanding that this is an issue that totally needs to be addressed. Smoking is one hell of a habit to kick, but the payoff of improved health outcomes is totally worth it.
To anyone who wants to talk facts, please be prepared with some solid back-up, and try not to be an insensitive jerk about it in the process.
TBH, H's mom smoked while pregnant with him, all was fine, and I would never call her a bad mom in any way. It was just a lot more common then, and yes, it is a bitch to quit.
That said, of course it's not good or okay to smoke while pregnant. While everyone will come up with an anecdote like mine, it's one of those weird things where it affects some people more than others and there's no way to know which you and your baby will be. You should try to be as healthy as you can, and smoking is incredibly UNhealthy. Baby needs oxygen, and smoking takes it away.
But great job cutting back. I don't think it's a good idea to put off quitting until after the first trimester- baby is doing a lot of growing at this time, and the sooner you quit the sooner you can be done with it, and hopefully as Prim said the MS will have at least one silver lining of making it easier. You'll never have better motivation than this. Do talk to your doctor; they can put you in touch with some specific smoking cessation help. I'm not sure if things like Nicotine or Wellbutrin are advisable in your case. Good luck and keep pushing yourself.
eta: qbf
Nerdchild said: Alright, I took a 'challenge accepted' stance to discussions of smoking and miscarriage in this thread. Here are a few abstracts (and links to articles) when you do a google scholar search for peer-reviewed articles post 2012 (because, come on, to stay accurate it's best to go recent/relevant). I bolded for emphasis. These were the only semi-relevant articles I found within the first 5 pages. I should note that many articles, upon closer review, would briefly discuss smoking and miscarriage risk in a methods sections as having little or no correlation, and therefore were not addressed in the discussion and conclusions portions.
Results Of the 417 participants, the prevalence of maternal and paternal smoking was 26.3% and 30.7%, respectively, and 13.4% of mothers were exposed to their partner’s smoke. One in three (n = 134, 32.1%) had a confirmed miscarriage at follow-up. Miscarriage was not associated with maternal smoking (30.6% for non-smokers versus 32.4% for smokers; P = 0.737) or paternal smoking (31.2% for non-smokers versus 32.8% for smokers; P = 0.763). A higher proportion of women exposed to their partner’s smoke experienced miscarriage (44.2% vs. 29.9%; Odds ratio=1.86, 95% CI=1.03–3.38; P = 0.038). The association remained even after adjustment for the mother’s own smoking (Adjusted odds ratio=2.22, 95% CI=1.12–4.40; P = 0.022).
https://jech.bmj.com/content/68/Suppl_1/A44.1.abstract
Result(s)After adjustment for confounding factors, the following were independently associated with increased risk: history of miscarriage, repeated induced abortion, working night shifts, and frequent staying up late. Vitamin supplementation and regular physical activity reduced the risk of miscarriage. We did not find paternal age, alcohol consumption, or smoking status to be linked with early miscarriage.https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(14)00151-4/abstract?cc=y=
And because I need to add this one for good measure, I have bolded multiple parts I find relevant to understanding this article, followed by my comments in brackets.
Abstract
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to characterize the relationship between smoking and miscarriage {This means 'we looked at a huge group of other peoples' data. We did not go out, recruit, control, and observe our own participants} . We searched the PubMed database (1956–August 31, 2011) {Holy shit, really? You couldn't find any more recent data sets?} using keywords and conducted manual reference searches of included articles and reports of the US Surgeon General. The full text of 1,706 articles was reviewed, and 98 articles that examined the association between active or passive smoking and miscarriage were included in the meta-analysis. {Uhhh....what? Cherry picking your data much? Who the hell okay'd this for publication?!} Data were abstracted by 2 reviewers. Any active smoking was associated with increased risk of miscarriage (summary relative risk ratio = 1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16, 1.30; n = 50 studies), and this risk was greater when the smoking exposure was specifically defined as during the pregnancy in which miscarriage risk was measured (summary relative risk ratio = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.44; n = 25 studies). The risk of miscarriage increased with the amount smoked (1% increase in relative risk per cigarette smoked per day). Secondhand smoke exposure during pregnancy increased the risk of miscarriage by 11% (95% CI: 0.95, 1.31; n = 17 studies). Biases in study publication, design, and analysis did not significantly affect the results. This finding strengthens the evidence that women should not smoke while pregnant, and all women of reproductive age should be warned that smoking increases the risk of miscarriage.
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/7/807.short
For those of you who have made it this far in my post, thank you for indulging my tendency to actually look into the freaking research.
TLDR; Out of the recent articles that explicitly discuss the association between smoking and miscarriage, there is no positive correlation. Many other articles briefly mention smoking and miscarriage in their methods sections, but are not noted here because they also find no positive correlation and don't even bother to mention smoking and miscarriage in their discussion, results and analysis, or conclusion sections. There is one random article that discusses the cherry-picked, fucking ancient data of a whole bunch of other people and that does find a positive correlation between miscarriage and smoking. Most of the people I know who are involved in research and publication (which is kind of my goddamned job, thanks) would never let this kind of article through editorial or peer-review.
So, OP, talk to your doctor about how to quit quickly and successfully, good luck on quitting, and on behalf of your baby thank you for understanding that this is an issue that totally needs to be addressed. Smoking is one hell of a habit to kick, but the payoff of improved health outcomes is totally worth it.
To anyone who wants to talk facts, please be prepared with some solid back-up, and try not to be an insensitive jerk about it in the process.
QFP
Little boy due July 31st 2016
It succckkeed, of course. IMO, though, it's actually harder to cut down than it is to just stop entirely. One or two a day, you are totally prolonging your misery. I say rip the bandaid. You're already withdrawing anyways, and no matter how slowly you wean, it's completely unavoidable. The first three days will be horrible. The first two weeks will suck. Then, slowly, you move on. I'm over twenty weeks and I barely think about it now.
You're not a terrible person; you're a mother doing her best. Just remember, as long as you have motor control, you can control what goes in your mouth. That's how I've always looked at it, anyway.
I was a long time smoker and a party girl up until 5 days ago when I found out I was pregnant , I must admit prior to finding out I was pregnant I would constantly beat myself up about my drinking and smoking lifestyle - always concerned that if I couldn't quit for a day how would I do it for the duration of my pregnancy . What I can say to you is that yes it is hard - today I'm on day 3 of not smoking the not drinking is easy but you will get there and you will feel better about it and you will succeed.
Just trust in yourself and it will happen cutting down is a good start and I'm proud of you.
We can be quit smoking buddies together :-)