How to Know If Smoking Can Harm Your Unborn Baby

Are you or someone you know struggling with an addiction to cigarettes while you are also pregnant? Would you like to have the low-down on what real risks are out there for your unborn baby should you decide to keep smoking?

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A pregnant woman who smokes

1. Smoking, particularly after the 4th month, has been documented to be responsible for 115,000 miscarriages and 5,600 infant deaths A YEAR!
2. It can increase the risk of many different types of abnormal pregnancy complications such as:
   
   vaginal bleeding
   abnormal placental implantation
   premature placental detachment
   premature rupture of the membranes
   early delivery
3. It has been suggested that as many as 14% of all preterm births in the US have been related to the expecting mother's smoking cigarettes.
4. Low birth weights can be another side effect. Being born too small is not just a matter of size. Being too small is the leading cause of infant illness and death just before, during or just after birth.
5. Babies born of smoking mothers are TWICE as likely to die of SIDS.
6. Babies born to heavier smokers are 4 TIMES as likely to have low apgar scores. (condition at birth)
7. Babies born to smokers are more likely to become hyperactive
8. Babies born to smokers are also more apt to develop respiratory conditions.
9. If you choose to keep smoking, you are in effect choosing to confine your tiny baby to a very small, confined space filled with smoke. Would you panic if your newborn baby were trapped in a room filled with that much smoke? Of course you would. Think about it.