Consequences of smoking cigarettes during pregnancy. The dangers of smoking for a child at different stages of pregnancy

Dear readers, hello! Answering the question in the title, I’ll say right away that smoking during pregnancy is dangerous and can lead to undesirable consequences not only for the unborn child. Perhaps, having read and understood the mechanism of action of nicotine on the fetus, the possible consequences of smoking during pregnancy early stages, women who smoke will make the right decision for themselves and give up this bad habit in time.

The great mission of a woman is motherhood. Every woman dreams of giving birth healthy child. But what her future child will be like depends on whether the woman herself is healthy during pregnancy. I won’t talk about somatic diseases now. But how often do you see pregnant women sitting near the gynecologist’s office, and then smoking cigarettes near the hospital! What are they thinking about when they puff on cigarette smoke?

Everyone knows the expression that a gram of nicotine kills a horse. This may be true, but it is worth noting that there are about 800 components in cigarette smoke, of which 30 are poisonous. Among them are carbon monoxide, nicotine, mercury compounds, cadmium, cobalt, etc. Therefore, when inhaling cigarette smoke, tobacco intoxication will always be a constant companion.

How smoking affects the body of a pregnant woman - this problem has been studied by many scientists around the world. The results of their research are not encouraging.

Smoking is dangerous for any person and causes many diseases, I have already told you about one of them, read about it. But smoking by a pregnant woman, no matter how far along she is, always causes dangerous consequences, because

• Carbon monoxide prevents the transfer of oxygen from cell to cell;
• Nicotine constricts small blood vessels, including those in the placenta;
• Carcinogenic mixtures capable of causing mutation and, accordingly, causing various oncologies;
• Benzopyrene during pregnancy causes genetic damage and the child may either not be born or be born with various deformities;

Smoking during pregnancy leads to the development of various pathologies both in the woman herself during pregnancy and during the intrauterine formation of the fetus, and in infants and growing children. What are these consequences?

Consequences of smoking in a pregnant woman

As soon as a woman takes a drag on a cigarette, all the harmful substances from her lungs are immediately absorbed into her blood and spread throughout her body. The maternal organism and the developing fetus are a single organism. All harmful substances from the mother’s circulatory system enter the body of the unborn child through the placenta, leading to vasospasm and oxygen starvation. Moreover, the concentration of harmful substances in the fetus’s body is greater than in the mother’s blood.

What can be the consequences of smoking during or before pregnancy? Here are the most common problems in women who smoke:

• miscarriages and premature births;
• disorders associated with breastfeeding;
• more severe pregnancy due to the development of preeclampsia and eclampsia (increased blood pressure, protein content in the urine, the presence of edema and convulsions), posing a threat to the life of the woman and child;
• early manifestations of toxicosis and the state of gestosis;
• frequent complaints of dizziness, problems with constipation;
• varicose veins develop or their condition worsens;
• Nicotine contributes to a deficiency of vitamin C, which helps strengthen the walls of blood vessels.

Separately, it should be said about the condition of the placenta in women who do not stop smoking during pregnancy. As a result of the action of nicotine, the placenta becomes thinner than normal, acquires a rounded shape, and the blood supply from mother to fetus is disrupted. All this can lead to premature placental abruption, excessive bleeding, which can lead to the death of the fetus and even the woman herself.

Harmful substances from tobacco smoke lead to spasm of the blood vessels of the uterus, disrupting the blood supply to the placenta. As a result, due to insufficient oxygen supply and high content carbon dioxide the fetus develops hypoxia.

Smoking reduces the absorption of B vitamins, ascorbic acid and folic acid, which are extremely necessary after 5 weeks of pregnancy, since during this period the embryo develops the future central nervous system.

Consequences of smoking for a child

No less serious consequences occur in children born to women who abuse smoking. While in the womb, the unborn child acts as a passive smoker, which is no less dangerous.

Nicotine addiction prevents the organs of the unborn baby from “maturing” by replacing healthy cells with sick ones. The appearance of defective cells is caused by tobacco toxins. Maximum nicotine damage is caused to the bone marrow, which requires a transplant after the baby is born.

But besides this, there are many other negative consequences from such “passive” smoking:

• the number of births of premature babies with low body weight is increasing;
• high risk of perinatal mortality;
• an increase in the number of physical malformations, among them possible defects in the development of the neural tube (dysraphism), heart defects, cleft lip, inguinal hernia, strabismus;
• Down's disease and various diseases newborns, most often these are diseases of the respiratory system;

• noticeable lag in physical and mental development, abnormalities in mental development;
• In women who smoke, the child refuses breastfeeding, so breast milk acquires a bitter taste, the child has to be switched to artificial feeding, and why this is dangerous can be read;
• a child born from a smoking mother has a high chance of becoming infertile in the future, this can happen equally in both boys and girls;
• as a result of the effect of nicotine on the brain, newborn children are restless, cry a lot, are capricious, and sleep poorly;
• Children whose mothers are women smokers have a high risk of dying in the first year of life from sudden cardiac arrest, for no apparent reason. This risk occurs more often in women who smoked throughout the second half of pregnancy.

When and how can you quit smoking?

You should quit smoking as soon as you find out that you are pregnant. When registering for pregnancy with a gynecologist, women who smoke are asked to quit smoking, listing the negative consequences of the bad habit. Many people think about it and, going overboard, give up smoking for the sake of the health of their unborn child. But what is the right thing to do and quit smoking so as not to harm the baby?

Doctors do not recommend abruptly quitting smoking if a woman smoked 10 or more cigarettes a day before pregnancy. Why? I have already noted that the fetus in the womb is a passive smoker. And pregnancy itself is stressful for the body. And quitting smoking can cause unwanted changes in physical and emotional state women.

Abrupt cessation of smoking can lead to bradycardia and activate muscle contraction, including the muscles of the uterus. This is dangerous due to premature termination of pregnancy.

Doctors' opinion : quit smoking gradually, reducing the number of cigarettes by one each day, and then take a few shallow puffs to satisfy your nicotine hunger. This period can be approximately extended by 2-3 weeks.

What should you do if you accidentally find out that you are pregnant and are an experienced smoker? If pregnancy is still in the early stages, the likelihood negative consequences decreases: the formation of the central nervous system and internal organs occurs starting from the 5th week.

It should be noted that responsibility for the health of the unborn child lies equally with both the woman and the man. When planning a pregnancy, you need to prepare for it. To do this, it is necessary, of course, to examine the parents for the presence of pathology. And smoking spouses should quit smoking, and quitting smoking should be conscious. Keep in mind that in women who smoke, the passage of the egg slows down.

Smoking by the father also has a negative impact on conceiving a child. In a man who smokes constantly, the blood vessels narrow, slowing down blood circulation in the reproductive organ, which is already an obstacle to simple conception. But by quitting smoking, the body is restored and the function of normal conception returns.

Conclusion

The most difficult period when you decide to quit smoking is the first day. And you need to have self-control so that you don’t start smoking again for company or out of boredom. And if you have an irresistible desire to take a cigarette, then before you light it, remember that a new life already lives inside you. Give her a chance to be born into this world as a healthy and full-fledged person. .

You should not think that if others smoke, then they did not have any problems either during pregnancy or later. But those who have such problems are unlikely to be frank.

Dear readers, the topic is very topical, since according to the Ministry of Health in Russia, 40% of women continue to smoke during pregnancy. Very sad statistics. We don't want sick children to be born, do we? Let as many people as possible know about this, share the information with your friends. Don't forget to subscribe to the blog news, there will be a lot more interesting things to come.

See you again! Taisiya Filippova was with you.

Each of us in our lives has probably heard more than once the statement that smoking is extremely dangerous for pregnancy, and took it as an axiom. When asked to give a clear explanation of exactly what threat this bad habit poses to the fetus, not everyone will be able to give the correct answer. It is necessary to deal with this topic once and for all in order to discourage every woman from picking up a cigarette.

Let's start with what concerns both mother and child. The fact is that substances entering the human body as a result of smoking lead to disruption of normal blood circulation. In particular, the blood vessels narrow greatly, both in the mother and the baby.

As a result, the fetus does not receive enough oxygen and other important and necessary substances necessary for full development. Lack of oxygen during fetal development is fraught with the birth of premature babies with very frail health. And, of course, the simplest thing: all the poison contained in tobacco will enter the child’s body and poison him.

Weight

If we take average values, then as a result of maternal smoking, the weight of the fetus decreases by about 200 grams. Experts have proven that the more cigarettes a mother smokes daily, the less the child’s body weight will be.

Lungs

As we have already indicated above, in some cases the baby is born premature, which means that by the time of birth not all internal organs the child has time to form. Most often this affects the lungs. In such cases, the baby’s life is complicated by diseases associated with the respiratory system. In addition, there is a high probability that they will have to deal with bronchial asthma.

Heart

One of the most important human organs is also at significant risk. Statistics show that mothers with tobacco addiction give birth to children who are at risk of developing congenital pathologies cardiovascular system increases by 20-70% compared to children of non-smoking mothers.

Brain

When a child of a conscious age begins to show problems with socialization, behavior, and studies, parents may not suspect that the mother’s smoking during pregnancy is to blame, but this is so. Tobacco products directly affect brain development and cause low intelligence in children.

Reproductive organs

An almost harmless activity at first glance - smoking - can lead to the fact that a male child’s testicles will not develop fully. In addition, smoking can cause an atypical location of the urethra in a child. Think carefully about whether it’s time to give up your addiction if it could lead to future infertility for your child.

Immunity

It is logical to assume that, among other problems, the fetus’s immunity will be greatly reduced. As a result, the child will be more at risk for developing infectious diseases and allergic reactions. In addition, such babies demonstrate a high predisposition to various types oncology.

Deformities

Do not forget that smoking can lead to a baby being born with a cleft lip, cleft palate, cauda equina, or other deformities. Unfortunately, it is maternal behavior that causes congenital anomalies. But, fortunately, she can prevent them if she finds the strength to give up tobacco in favor of her unborn child.

Other difficulties

Addiction to this bad habit also leads to the child developing numerous dysfunctions nervous system. This is due to the fact that the baby’s body does not receive such necessary vitamins B and C, which are simply poorly absorbed due to mom’s smoking. Moreover, the baby may exhibit mental disorders. Sometimes Down syndrome develops.

Effect on the placenta

It is very important to remember the fact that during pregnancy the baby communicates with the mother through the placenta. If the parent smokes, then the oxygen entering the mother's blood becomes carbon monoxide, which clearly does not benefit the fetus. This leads to oxygen starvation, which slows down the baby’s development processes.

But this is not the worst thing that can happen to an expectant mother. Tobacco addiction causes the placenta to change in shape, size and structure. It is important to remember that during the process of bearing a child, the placenta matures in 4 stages. Stages 3 and 4 develop 2 weeks before birth, but smoking stimulates this process and causes the placenta to mature faster than necessary.

As a result, the walls of the placenta become thinner, thereby losing their functional qualities. If the placenta is rejected, the mother is likely to have a miscarriage or intrauterine fetal death.

Passive smoking

Due to the fact that nicotine moves quite quickly along with the blood and invariably enters the fetus’s body, the baby thereby becomes a passive smoker, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. Think about it: an unborn baby always has nicotine in its blood. After birth, it no longer enters the child’s body, which begins to lack it. The result is sleep problems and increased excitability of the baby.

Statistics

Some women who are not ready to give up cigarettes for the sake of their child become unwilling killers. The fact is that among women who smoke, compared to non-smokers, the likelihood of infant death in newborns increases by almost 21 percent. When moms smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day, that figure increases to 26 percent. If we translate this into more specific numbers, then we get death in every fourth case.

For women who smoke, the risk of early miscarriage greatly increases - 1.7 times more likely than for mothers without a bad habit. Sometimes the timing is so insignificant that a woman does not even have time to notice her pregnancy.

Video - How smoking affects pregnancy

These days negative influence cigarettes in general and the harm of smoking during pregnancy have been proven by numerous studies. Until the middle of the last century, humanity knew little about the dangers of smoking. Tobacco was considered almost safe, and active advertising led to the fact that most of the adult population of the planet began to smoke a lot and often.

However, despite the obvious risks that a woman carrying a child exposes herself to, many smokers still find it difficult to give up their addiction.

The harm of smoking to the body

It has been proven that cigarettes are dangerous for any organism, including adults. The culprit is the dangerous substances that make up tobacco. This includes nicotine, as well as carbon monoxide, tars that can cause cancer, radioactive substances and benzopyrene.

Numerous studies show that smokers are at greater risk of cancer of the lungs, skin, prostate and other organs. In addition, people who smoke have faster tooth decay, more osteoporosis, hearing loss, cataracts, slower sperm formation and a higher risk of developing heart disease.

Smoking during pregnancy

The harm of smoking during pregnancy doubles, and primarily because a smoking woman risks not only her health, but also the health of her unborn baby.

Getting into a woman's blood, the whole gamut hazardous substances contained in tobacco reaches the placenta in a matter of seconds and enters the developing body of the baby. Nicotine provokes vasospasm, and a process begins that doctors call hypoxia, or oxygen starvation. The fetus receives less oxygen and nutrients, and development slows down.

In this regard, early miscarriage or premature birth occurs much more often in women who smoke than in those who are not exposed to this condition. bad habit. Women who smoke are almost 2 times more likely to give birth to premature or simply very small and weak children. In the future, the child of a smoker is more susceptible to diseases; his immune system is not as strong as that of healthy peers.

Smoking is also dangerous because the risk of infant mortality is almost 30% higher if the mother smoked while pregnant.

The impact of nicotine on a child's future health

The risks to which the child’s body is exposed are also unreasonably high. Moreover, diseases, disorders and deviations can be detected immediately after the baby is born, or appear as the child grows up. The following facts apply:

1. Doctors note that smokers are more likely to give birth to children with heart defects.
2. Children of women who smoke are capricious and cry a lot. The reason for this is damage to brain cells caused by nicotine.
3. In the future, due to prolonged oxygen starvation, such children may experience developmental delays. They learn worse and are less able to concentrate.
4. Disturbances in the functioning of the respiratory system can lead to bronchial asthma.
5. Boys have underdeveloped reproductive systems, such as smaller testicles and insufficient sperm. There are also cases of hypospadias and cryptorchidism (the testicle remains in abdominal cavity, and surgery is required to lower it into the scrotum).
6. Impaired lung function is another common pathology found in babies born to smoking mothers.
7. There may be cases of delayed development of joints or liver.
8. In addition, it has been proven that if a woman smokes during pregnancy, the risk of nicotine addiction in her unborn child increases almost 5 times. Statistics show that there are more drug addicted children among those whose mothers smoked during pregnancy.

Other diseases

At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists added some more risks to this impressive list of problems. Smoking during pregnancy is fraught with the development of the following problems in the child:

• cleft lip (facial part upper jaw does not grow together completely);
• cleft palate (in this case the two halves of the palate do not fuse together);
• clubfoot;
• autism.

The formation of the palate of the fetus begins already at 6 weeks of pregnancy. At this stage, women are often still just guessing about their pregnancy. Meanwhile, smoking at this stage risks the baby being born with a facial defect. Scientists found that 42% of mothers whose children were born with a cleft smoked in early pregnancy.

Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of clubfoot by 34%. And if there have already been cases of this defect in the family, then, according to scientists, the risk increases 20 times.

Harm of smoking for a pregnant woman

The danger that a smoker exposes to the fetus is completely unjustified. But it is also absurd not to notice the harm of smoking for the woman herself.

Women who smoke have a 65% increased risk of placenta previa. This is a very dangerous disorder in which the placenta is not attached to the side wall of the uterus, but from above the cervix. A woman can lose a lot of blood, and the birth itself is very difficult. This is not the only complication that can occur in a pregnant woman. There is a high risk of anemia and bleeding.

In the future, the ability of a smoking woman to conceive and bear a child is reduced.

Passive smoking and fetal development

The harm of smoking for pregnant women is not limited only to those cases when the expectant mother herself smokes. Passive smoking, when a woman simply inhales tobacco smoke, is also fraught with consequences.

The fact is that the tobacco that a woman inhales also enters the bloodstream, albeit in smaller quantities. Thus, if during pregnancy a woman is surrounded by smokers, harmful substances enter her body and placenta, causing hypoxia with all the ensuing consequences described above.

The risk in this case is slightly lower, but still present. Therefore, if the father of the unborn child or other people from the immediate environment of a pregnant woman continue to smoke, it is necessary to minimize contact.

Myths about smoking

Some women, even knowing about everyone possible consequences, do not dare to quit smoking, inventing numerous excuses for themselves. There are so many myths surrounding addiction that it can be easy to find a suitable excuse. The most common legends are as follows.

Smoking during pregnancy is bad, simply unacceptable, because it gives birth to weak children: they weigh little and get sick often. Everyone knows about this. And not so long ago, scientists proved that a child, accustomed to nicotine while still in the mother’s womb, risks becoming a fat smoking psycho with criminal tendencies and a “cleft palate.”

From history

Paradoxically, humanity learned about the dangers of smoking only in the 50s of the 20th century, and before that even doctors were one hundred percent sure that tobacco was absolutely harmless. However, a vague suspicion that it was better for children not to abuse nicotine crept in. It is not for nothing that in the mid-1920s the young Soviet government issued a propaganda poster with the warning: “Smoking schoolchildren study worse than non-smokers.”

Attitudes towards smoking worsened sharply only in 1956, when 40 thousand doctors from different countries compared the medical histories of their patients. It was then that it turned out that heavy smokers are many times more likely than non-smokers to suffer from cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, as well as lung cancer.

“What other troubles can we expect from tobacco?” - the scientists got scared and hastily began studying the effect of nicotine on living organisms. Experiments on animals have proven that animals die from tobacco. Apparently, it was then that the expression arose: “A drop of nicotine kills a horse.” Gradually, scientists discovered more and more new facts about the effect of cigarettes on human body. It turned out that smoking not only affects the lungs, bronchi and heart, but also deteriorates the functioning of the glands internal secretion, digestion is disrupted, character and teeth deteriorate, potency decreases. However, smoking causes the greatest harm to unborn children.

Smoking during pregnancy

All nicotine, carbon monoxide, benzopyrene and even some radioactive substances from cigarettes, entering the body of a pregnant woman, immediately penetrate through the placenta to the baby after the first puff. Moreover, the concentration of all these substances in the fetus’s body is much higher than in the mother’s blood! What happens next can be easily imagined. Nicotine causes a spasm of the blood vessels of the placenta, and the child experiences oxygen starvation. Toxic substances affect all his delicate organs and prevent the baby from developing normally.

As a result, most children born to smokers are born with low birth weight, often get sick, develop more slowly than their peers, and more often die in childhood. Statistics show: smoking (regardless of the number of cigarettes smoked) during pregnancy increases the risk of its unfavorable outcome by almost 2 times!

After scientists published these shocking data, it became clear: quitting smoking before pregnancy is the only way to give birth to a healthy baby. However, even when all expectant mothers have become aware of the dangers of cigarettes, many women do not think about smoking during pregnancy. Warnings about underweight and mysterious intrauterine growth retardation sounded abstract, but the mental and physical addiction to nicotine was real. Neither a positive attitude, nor nicotine patches and chewing gum, nor sessions of psychotherapy and acupuncture helped quit smoking. Approximately 25% of all pregnant women continued to smoke.

What are the consequences for the psyche?

By the end of the 20th century, new data on the effects of smoking on pregnancy shocked the medical world. It turned out that nicotine has a bad effect not only on the physical, but also on the mental state of the unborn child. German scientists have proven that children of smoking mothers are already early age They are characterized by inattention, impulsiveness and hyperactivity disorder with attention deficit disorder, and their level of mental development is below average.

Most often, the so-called “fidgety Phil” syndrome develops - these children, as a rule, are aggressive and prone to deception. English doctors came to the conclusion that children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy have a 40% increased risk of developing autism, a mental illness in which a person cannot deal with the surrounding reality and focuses on the world of his own experiences.

Trying to explain this fact, scientists suggested that the insufficient supply of oxygen to the embryo’s brain was to blame. In addition, it is possible that nicotine affects specific genes responsible for psychomotor functions. An international team of researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has found a link between smoking during pregnancy and children's subsequent risk of crime. They compiled information about four thousand men born in Copenhagen from September 1951 to December 1961, as well as their arrest histories, by the age of 34. It turned out that those men whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were 1.6 times more likely to end up in prison for non-violent crimes and 2 times more likely for violent ones.

"Cleft lip" and "cleft palate"

The frightening discoveries didn't end there. In 2003, British scientists identified the relationship between smoking in early pregnancy and the birth of a child with a facial cleft. According to the author of the study, Peter Mossey (professor at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Dundee), the formation of the palate occurs at 6-8 weeks of pregnancy, and smoking by the expectant mother during this period can manifest itself in the form of a “cleft palate” or “cleft lip” in the child.

Additional studies confirmed the guess. 42% of mothers whose children were born with a facial defect smoked while pregnant. As for non-smoking mothers, they were born with such “wrong” children two times less often.

Around the same time, American researchers proved that women who smoked during pregnancy were much more likely to give birth to club-footed children. The risk of clubfoot among such children is 34% higher. And if, in addition, maternal smoking is combined with a hereditary factor, then the risk of clubfoot increases 20 times.

Latest data

1. Children of women who smoked during pregnancy are a third more likely than others to develop diabetes or obesity by age 16.
2. Boys born to mothers who smoke have smaller testicles, and the concentration of sperm in semen is on average 20% lower than in children of non-smokers.
3. Children of mothers who smoked during pregnancy are several times more likely to start smoking themselves than children whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy.

The news of pregnancy often plunges a woman into shock: the new situation becomes a real test of the strength and maturity of the expectant mother. The point is that with the advent of a new life inside, you will have to make certain adjustments to your usual lifestyle - buy vitamins, do exercises, eat only healthy products, give up bad habits... As practice shows, most often problems for expectant mothers arise precisely with the last point of the program for bearing a healthy baby. Quitting smoking is a serious challenge, and quitting smoking while pregnant is also a vital task. Why an expectant mother needs to forget about cigarettes at all costs, you will find out in the article.

Of course, it is better to avoid this bad habit altogether. However, for one reason or another, the percentage of women who smoke in our country increases every year, and the age of acquaintance with the first cigarette, on the contrary, decreases. What should an expectant mother do with her addiction to nicotine? There is only one answer and there are no compromises in this situation: quit smoking as soon as possible. It would be unfair and unethical to put pressure on women who smoke to feel guilty, because each of them is an adult, self-sufficient person who is responsible for herself and her offspring independently. And, of course, only the mother of the unborn baby has the right to make the final decision. We will simply help her see the general and objective picture of the relationships in the triangle “mother – cigarettes – child”, providing useful material for reflection. We hope this will help a woman set her priorities correctly and easily step into new life, leaving a bad habit in the past.

How does smoking affect pregnancy?

Extensive research has been and is currently being carried out around the world on the effect of nicotine addiction on the course of pregnancy and the fetus in the womb. All of them confirm the complex adverse effects of cigarettes on a woman and her baby: the maternal body suffers, burdened by pregnancy, there is a threat to the normal prenatal development of the fetus, and the likelihood of abnormalities in infants and one-year-old children increases.

When a pregnant woman smokes, the baby is enveloped in a dense ring of smoke, which spasms the blood vessels of the fragile growing body and provokes the development of oxygen starvation in the fetus. Under the influence of nicotine, the placenta becomes thin and takes on a round shape, increasing the risk of its detachment. Due to smoking, the hemoglobin of the mother's body reduces its active activity, which concerns the transport of oxygen to the uterus and the baby in it. As a result of this disorder, arterial spasm of the uterus occurs, which becomes the cause of placental function disorder, and the child begins to systematically receive less of the oxygen he needs.

Each puff brings the expectant mother closer to serious and sometimes irreversible consequences, among which the most unfavorable are:

• high risk of spontaneous miscarriage;
• the birth of a premature baby with low adaptive abilities;
• probability of perinatal death;
• the small weight of the newborn, which significantly reduces his chances of full development;
• the formation of physical pathologies in the fetus;
• development of preeclampsia - the condition threatens the lives of both the mother and her child (the woman develops extensive swelling, protein in the urine, and blood pressure rises sharply);
• the risk of delayed manifestation of the consequences of smoking - intellectual and social disorders may occur in a child some time after birth.

Even a few puffs a day will not improve the situation - the consequences of smoking during pregnancy will manifest themselves in any case and, first of all, will be felt by the woman herself:

• future mothers who smoke feel much worse than those who do not have bad habits;
• early toxicosis and gestosis are the first symptoms of nicotine poisoning in the female body;
• smoking contributes to the appearance or worsening of varicose veins in a pregnant woman, and also causes dizziness and impaired digestive function (diarrhea or constipation);
• nicotine “eats” vitamin C in the mother’s body. The shortage of this useful substance results in metabolic disorders, decreased general immunity, problems with protein absorption, poor resistance to stress and depression.

Smoking during pregnancy casts a shadow on the well-being of the baby after birth. When a pregnant woman smokes, the fetus is poisoned by tobacco smoke. So the child finds himself at the mercy of passive smoking, which threatens him with acquiring bad habits in the future. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are often introduced to tobacco and drinking in their early teens. Babies, doomed to nicotine addiction in the womb, are more capricious, sleep poorly, have difficulty concentrating, and many of them suffer from suffocation attacks.

In addition, the latest scientific research showed that carcinogens that enter the body of a smoking woman along with tobacco smoke depress reproductive system fetus, which is at the stage of formation. This means that children born in the future may face the problem of infertility: girls of smoking mothers have a sharply reduced supply of eggs, and boys may face erectile dysfunction(impotence).

The effect of smoking during pregnancy at different stages

It doesn’t matter what month of pregnancy a woman smokes – it harms her baby in any case. The only difference is which organ or system of the little man’s body will suffer more than others.

Smoking in early pregnancy

When a smoking woman is informed that she is expecting a child, she begins to suffer from remorse about her bad habit. In this case, the expectant mother can be reassured a little: nature took care of the new life in advance. Conception occurs around the 14th day menstrual cycle. Experts consider the first week to be neutral - a close connection has not yet been established between the woman and the embryo in her womb. The clump of cells that will later turn into a person is developing thanks to on our own and stocks. The embryo immerses into the endometrium with the onset of the second week of pregnancy, and the woman begins to suspect her position only after her period is delayed.

Smoking turns the entire physiology of pregnancy upside down, distorting all processes involved in the formation of the organs of the unborn child, replacing normal cells with diseased ones. In especially severe cases, tobacco toxins distort the structure of the baby's bone marrow so much that a transplant of the substance is necessary after birth. It is obvious that smoking during early pregnancy has the greatest degree of danger. One puff of cigarette smoke brings a whole range of toxic substances to the baby: nicotine, hydrogen cyanide, benzopyrene, tar, formaldehyde. Fetal hypoxia, lack of adequate blood flow in the vessels of the placenta, spontaneous miscarriage, increased risk of vaginal bleeding - these are just a tenth of the consequences of the proximity of a bad habit to pregnancy. Every year, the number of cases where women who smoke during pregnancy give birth to babies with a “cleft palate” or “cleft lip” is growing. These palate pathologies are difficult to correct with plastic surgery.

Smoking during 1 month of pregnancy

It may happen that due to large-scale changes in the body, the smell of tobacco will seem disgusting to a woman. However, in most cases, pregnancy does not affect addiction in any way, so expectant mother continues to smoke, remaining for some time in ignorance of his situation.

The risk of miscarriage at this time is maximum: maternal smoking literally cuts off oxygen to the embryo, without which not a single creature can survive. Without adequate oxygen supply, the process of formation of all important organs and systems of the child is disrupted. Please note that passive inhalation of tobacco smoke causes the same harm to a pregnant woman as active smoking of cigarettes.

Smoking during the 5th – 6th month of pregnancy

At the 5th month of intrauterine life, the baby has already acquired arms and legs, he is actively trying to control them. After a period of activity, the child will certainly calm down to rest and gain strength. The little man can cough, hiccup, kick, and his mother can already accurately determine when he moves. During this period, the child’s body builds up brown fat, thanks to which the human body temperature remains unchanged. Sweat glands form in the skin.

As a result of the research, it was possible to see a shocking picture: when tobacco smoke penetrates a woman’s body, and from there into the placenta, the baby grimaces and tries to move away from her. harmful substance. The effect of smoking on pregnancy during this period disrupts the natural order of fetal development, leading to severe consequences. Among them are hypoxia and premature birth, which become a death sentence for the baby. At this age, he is still completely unprepared to face the outside world.

Smoking during 8–9 months of pregnancy

A regularly satisfied craving for cigarettes during the 8th month of expecting a baby results in serious complications: uterine bleeding, prenatal condition, miscarriage. Maternal smoking directly affects the fetus very strongly. Such children experience underdevelopment of the brain, low weight, and spontaneous death in the first hours/days after birth.

The ninth, the last month of the baby’s stay in the mother’s womb, is very important - the child is preparing to greet the world with his first cry. Every week he gains about 250 g of weight and gradually descends into the pelvic cavity. The woman is increasingly experiencing short-term and painless contractions, and her easy, unconstrained breathing returns.

Smoking mercilessly interferes with this process and makes its own adjustments to the creation of a new person. Let us list the complications that are always observed in a woman who smokes in the last weeks of pregnancy:

• partial or complete detachment of the placenta, the development of severe uterine bleeding;
• pronounced hypertension;
• toxicosis;
• start labor activity ahead of schedule;
• high risk of stillbirth;
• the likelihood of giving birth to a premature baby.

And this is a list of pathologies that can deprive a baby of all chances for full life, if his mother was unable to cope with her nicotine addiction during pregnancy:

• defects of the nervous system;
• mental disorders;
• Down syndrome;
• myocardial diseases;
• heterotropia;
• inguinal hernia;
• pathologies of the nasopharynx.

All doctors, as one, insist: it is never too late to quit smoking - even if a woman does it at the final stage of pregnancy, she will still provide an invaluable service to her baby.

Smoking and alcohol during pregnancy

Alcohol is another toxic substance that can extremely negatively affect the intrauterine development of a child. Cigarettes and alcohol are a very dangerous combination during pregnancy. Numerous studies in this area have presented the public with disappointing facts: ethanol, acetaldehyde and nicotine, having a complex effect on the fetal body, cause irreversible changes in the DNA chain, destroy the process of protein synthesis and cause severe brain pathologies.

Penetrating into the body of an unborn child, alcohol remains there twice as long as in the mother’s body, so even irregular moderate doses of alcohol do not guarantee that the newborn will be healthy. Drinking alcohol and smoking during pregnancy damages the child's most vulnerable organs - the kidneys, liver and brain. Among babies born to mothers with bad habits, cases of sudden infant death syndrome are very common, when a child dies for no objective reason (most often in his sleep).

Harmful alcohol and nicotine addiction in the last weeks before childbirth causes the development of gestosis. This condition poses a danger to the life of the mother and fetus. The main target for toxins becomes vascular system mother, who as a result cannot fully supply the placenta with blood and valuable elements in it. In this regard, the child’s development slows down, placental abruption occurs, and premature birth may occur.

Smoking during pregnancy is a sign of selfishness and failure of a woman as a future mother, whose procreation instincts are not strong enough to put an end to the harmful addiction once and for all. A pregnant woman who smokes should not withdraw into herself, being left alone with the problem. On the contrary, she needs to ask for help - from doctors, family and friends. There are many ways to give up cigarettes, but first of all you need to really want it, and the health and well-being of your unborn baby will be the most important motivation for this.

The effect of cigarettes on fetal development. Video