Pregnancy and smoking. What happens when a pregnant woman smokes

It is clear to everyone that smoking and pregnancy are two incompatible concepts. Unfortunately, smoking during pregnancy is a pressing problem for many women, and not all of them understand the risk to the unborn child. But the harm from this habit can affect not only the unborn child, but also interfere with the process of conception itself.

Let's talk in more detail about the consequences of maternal smoking before pregnancy for the unborn child and how smoking affects pregnancy.

Pregnancy and smoking. Smoking before conception

Smoking is one of the causes of infertility. Scientists have proven that a smoking woman's eggs die more often, and this happens under the negative influence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which enter the body along with tobacco smoke. Thus, smoking reduces the likelihood of conception by approximately half (depending on the woman’s smoking history).

By the way, quite often smoking women There is a disturbance in the menstrual cycle; accordingly, ovulation occurs less frequently, but menopause occurs earlier.

Smoking negatively affects not only the health of women, but also the health of men. After all, the quality of sperm in men who smoke is worse than in non-smokers. It contains a much smaller number of viable sperm. And in general, men who smoke often suffer from impotence. What can we say about the health of future offspring...

Pregnancy and smoking. Smoking in early pregnancy

If a woman does not plan a pregnancy, and does not stop smoking during this period, and also does not closely monitor her menstrual cycle, then she may not immediately notice that she is pregnant. What are the dangers for an unborn child from smoking? early stages pregnancy? As you know, the first weeks of pregnancy are the most important and dangerous in terms of the development of all kinds of complications and intrauterine pathologies. Even an ordinary climate change can provoke miscarriage or fetal death, let alone pregnancy and smoking, especially if a woman smokes more than five cigarettes a day.

Especially great harm can be caused to an unborn child if a woman has a long history of smoking and is over 35 years old. At this age and without smoking, the risk of having a full-fledged birth and healthy child decreases. But smoking and pregnancy at this age are very, very dangerous combination, because bearing a child involves increased load on the cardiovascular system, and in a smoking woman it is weakened. This leads to a constant exacerbation of chronic diseases and the emergence of new ones.

It is important to know that after each cigarette smoked, the blood vessels remain in a compressed state for some time and at this time the child receives insufficient quantity oxygen and nutrients, which in the early stages can even cause the death of a child.

On later chronic hypoxia fetus (lack of oxygen) often causes the development of various diseases. It has already been scientifically proven that pregnancy and smoking often cause the birth of children with such congenital physical defects as cleft lip, cleft palate, etc. Often such malformations are explained precisely by the lack of oxygen during the period intrauterine development.

Pregnancy and late-term smoking

Smoking more than five cigarettes a day during pregnancy provokes this very dangerous complication, like placental abruption. When placental abruption occurs, a pregnant woman begins to bleed profusely, which can only be stopped surgically. In late pregnancy, doctors often resort to emergency caesarean section, as a result of which the baby can be saved. But often such children remain disabled for life, since placental abruption causes acute hypoxia in the fetus.

The combination of “smoking and pregnancy” provokes an exacerbation hypertension and often becomes the cause of gestosis (late toxicosis of pregnant women). This condition requires timely treatment, otherwise it threatens the health of the mother and unborn child.

Smoking during pregnancy often causes a woman to be unable to carry a child to term. Thus, pregnancy and smoking are a dangerous combination in which women often experience premature birth. It is also good if you manage to carry the child to such a period when he can survive. What if not? Is it worth the risk? And it’s probably not worth talking about the difficulties of caring for premature babies, as well as what health problems they subsequently have.

In women who smoke, they are often observed in the placenta. dystrophic changes resulting from negative impact harmful substances contained in tobacco. A poorly functioning placenta cannot fully supply the baby with all the nutrients and oxygen it needs. That is why, according to statistics, children of smoking women are usually born with less weight than those of non-smokers.

In particularly severe cases, stillborn children are born even in late pregnancy. And smoking plays an important role here. In combination with others unfavorable factors, such as infectious diseases and alcohol, smoking is one of the main causes leading to intrauterine fetal death.

Pregnancy and smoking. What happens after birth?

We have found out how smoking affects pregnancy. But how about we figure out what happens to babies whose blood has been exposed to harmful substances? Such children have a fairly high risk of developing various diseases pulmonary diseases(pneumonia, asthma, bronchitis). If, after birth, the child continues to inhale tobacco smoke, this risk increases several times.

Surely, every woman knows what sudden infant death is and is afraid of it. This is when for unknown reasons The baby's heart stops beating. Exact reasons This phenomenon is unknown, but according to several tests, such a dangerous combination as pregnancy and smoking is not the least important.

Pregnancy and smoking: quit or not?

After we have figured out how smoking affects the early and late stages of pregnancy, as well as the health of the child after birth, you need to decide whether you want a similar fate for your unborn child? But now they say on every corner that sudden throwing is also harmful to the unborn child? Yes, unfortunately, this is true. If your mother smokes a lot, you shouldn’t quit abruptly, as this can lead to severe stress for the mother, which, naturally, will not have a positive effect on the fetus. But, nevertheless, it is necessary to quit, you just need to do it gradually. You just need to remember that nicotine addiction disappears very quickly - just a few days are enough. The psychological one, of course, will be much more difficult to cope with, but you must admit that your incentive is not weak - the health of your unborn child.

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 early pregnancy, smoking women will accept for themselves the right decision and give up this bad habit in time.

The great mission of a woman is motherhood. Every woman dreams of giving birth to a healthy child. But what will her unborn child, depends on whether the woman herself is healthy during pregnancy. I won't talk about now somatic diseases. 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, compounds of mercury, cadmium, cobalt, etc. Therefore, when inhaled 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 various pathologies both in the woman herself during pregnancy and during the intrauterine formation of the fetus, and in children in infancy and in 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 body and developing fetus is a single organism. All harmful substances from circulatory system mothers 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;
develops varicose veins veins or their condition worsens;
nicotine contributes to a deficiency of vitamin C, which helps strengthen the walls 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 and acquires rounded shape, the blood supply from mother to fetus is disrupted. All this can lead to premature detachment placenta, heavy bleeding, which can lead to the death of the fetus and even the woman herself.

Harmful substances tobacco smoke lead to spasm of the uterine vessels, 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 begins to form 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”, replacing healthy cells sick. The appearance of defective cells is caused by tobacco toxins. Maximum nicotine harm applied 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 hernias, strabismus;
Down's disease and various diseases newborns, most often these are diseases 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 transferred to artificial feeding, and why this is dangerous you can 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 stop hearts, 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, smoking women are asked to give up smoking by transferring negative consequences 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 of negative consequences is reduced: 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 recovers its function. 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 what already lives inside you new life. 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 him know about this as much as possible more people, 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.

Reading time: 10 minutes

In a woman's life, expecting a child is joyful event, but for smoking representatives of the fair sex, the time from conception to childbirth is a real test. An experienced smoker often fails in her attempt to quit the addiction. The justification for such expectant mothers is increased nervousness and reviews from those who smoked throughout pregnancy, but nothing happened to the child. Research and medical statistics suggest otherwise.

What is pregnancy

The physiological process in the female body, in which, after fertilization of the egg, a fetus is formed that can live in the womb, is called pregnancy. Up to 10 obstetric weeks, the embryo develops. From the 11th week of pregnancy it is called a fetus. On average, the development process of a child in the womb lasts 280 days. A period of time of 40 weeks is considered from the date of the last menstrual period ( obstetric term) or 38 weeks from the moment of conception (embryonic period). Pregnancy is divided into trimesters, each of three months (1-12 weeks - first, 13-28 - second, 29-40 - third).

Prosperous course of this physiological process is collateral proper planning. Increases the chance of birth healthy baby full examination of the couple even before conception, delivery necessary tests, treatment chronic pathologies, balanced diet, psychological preparation, mandatory abandonment of bad habits. First signs of pregnancy:

pain in the lumbar region;
increased mucous secretions;
bloating;
headache;
nausea;
sensitive breasts;
fatigue;
increased sensitivity to odors;
mood swings;
frequent urination;
delay of menstruation.

Smoking before pregnancy

Doctors say that a woman's smoking is one of the reasons for her infertility. This statement is based on medical research that found that due to negative influence aromatic hydrocarbons that penetrate into the body along with tobacco smoke, eggs often die. If the woman smoked before pregnancy long time, then the probability of conception is halved.

If you have this bad habit, menstrual irregularities are more common, ovulation occurs much less frequently, and menopause occurs faster. Smoking is dangerous not only for women, but also for the future father. Smoking man has low quality sperm, as it contains few viable sperm. Smokers, especially those with a history of hypertension, often suffer from impotence.

When can you plan to get pregnant after smoking?

For successful fertilization, both the expectant mother and the expectant father need to quit smoking at least a year before conception. Smoking affects the development of a baby in the womb not only during pregnancy, but also long before it. With prolonged inhalation of tobacco smoke, a woman inherits many diseases to her child. Regular intake of nicotine into the body accelerates the aging process, therefore female body wears out faster. Harm to all organs and systems is caused by more than 4,000 harmful substances that cigarettes contain:

Respiratory system. Through the trachea, cigarette smoke enters the lungs, lingering for a fraction of a second. This time is enough for part of the nicotine to be absorbed into the blood, and part remains for inner surface lungs and bronchi. Resins do not lose their activity even when a woman quits smoking. They remain poisonous long period time until they are completely eliminated from the body, and this takes months and even years.
Cardiovascular system. Regular smoking increases the heart rate, which harms the main organ. Smokers are at risk of myocardial infarction and other heart pathologies.
Digestive system. This includes the oral cavity, nasopharynx, esophagus, stomach, and intestines. The harm is obvious: there is an increased risk of deterioration in the quality of teeth, the development of diseases of the esophagus, liver, kidneys and other organs of the gastrointestinal tract.
Hair and nails. Women who smoke need much more vitamin C than non-smokers. Cigarette abuse reduces the level of vitamin C, iron and calcium in the body, which leads to brittle nails, hair loss and other defects.

Is it possible to smoke during pregnancy?

According to WHO, 30% of pregnant women do not give up cigarettes. This creates certain statistics on the impact of tobacco smoke on the health of the fetus. Below is only part of the list of dysfunctions that smoking during pregnancy causes:

Miscarriage. Among pregnant women who smoke, spontaneous abortion occurs in 80% of cases. Reason: incomparable amount of poison with the weight of the fetus.
Perinatal mortality. Children who manage to survive in the womb of a smoking mother and are born face a new challenge - 35% of such babies die in the first week of life. Cause of death: newborn diseases incompatible with life.
Syndrome sudden death. This is the name for cases when a newborn baby stops breathing in his sleep. Stopping breathing is provoked by imperfections in the autonomic nervous system, the development of which great influence influenced by tobacco smoke inhaled by the mother during pregnancy.
Intrauterine developmental delay. Doctors call this the lag in fetal size and weight. The most easy stage malnutrition - a delay of 2 weeks, during which the baby spends energy not on development, but on restoring body weight.
Premature destruction of the placenta. In a woman who smokes, this can happen in any trimester. If the area of detachment is equal to a third of the total area of the placenta, then the fetus dies.

How does smoking affect pregnancy?

First of all, the harm of smoking during pregnancy concerns disruption of the structure of the placenta. Compared to normal, its tissues shrink significantly and become thinner. Under the influence of nicotine, the placenta undergoes changes in the blood supply and acquires a rounded shape. These processes provoke premature detachment, contribute to extensive hemorrhage and death of the child in the womb.

There is such a thing medical concept as "fetal tobacco syndrome". They determine the effect of nicotine on the unborn child. This diagnosis is differentiated if:

the mother smoked more than 5 cigarettes every day during fetal development;
during pregnancy the woman had severe hypertension;
at 37 weeks, a symmetrical slowdown in growth was noticed in the fetus;
the newborn has stomatitis, dulled sense of smell and taste;
the baby has a disorder of hematopoiesis;
takes place increased coagulability blood;
the baby's immunity is reduced;
the child has premature aging skin (appearance of wrinkles).

In the early stages

Doctors say that the danger of tobacco on the development of the embryo manifests itself immediately after conception. Unfortunately, most pregnancies in our country are unplanned. Often a woman finds out about it 1-1.5 months after conception, and before that she continues to conduct her familiar image life. If she smokes, then nicotine intoxication of the body from an early stage affects the development of the child’s brain, because it is formed already at 4 weeks. At this stage of gestation, the fetus is not yet protected by the placental barrier, so it is defenseless against any external influence.

What are the dangers of smoking during early pregnancy?

	Harm to the child
	Smoking poses a risk of physical harm. Organs and tissues develop from cells. The process is controlled by DNA molecules, which “throw out” unusable elements from the system. Since tobacco smoke substances can attach to chromosomes, the DNA will remove them along with the tissues, and the body little man will develop without any limb or other organ.
	Nicotine affects the blood vessels of the placenta. When it is present in the mother’s body, vascular spasm occurs, which is why the fetus constantly experiences oxygen starvation(hypoxia). This leads to various complications, starting from the small weight of the child in the womb and the development of early gestosis, to psychological abnormalities baby that will remain for life.

In the later stages

From the 4th month of pregnancy, a woman no longer has a fetus in her stomach, but full-fledged person. Although it is still very small, it is a mature organism with a whole set of systems. Next, the child develops internal organs, the fat layer grows and muscle mass, weight gain. What are the consequences of smoking during late pregnancy for a baby in the womb?

Harm to the child

The baby's respiratory, digestive, and cardiovascular systems are included in the work. Nicotine entering an unformed body strikes them. The circulation of cigarette smoke clogs the fetal organs through the maternal blood and inhibits their development.

Addiction to nicotine allows children's body learn to process the resulting chemicals and become addicted to nicotine in the womb. After childbirth, the baby is deprived of constant nutrition and experiences real withdrawal. The baby is capricious, sleeps poorly, and experiences severe emotional stress.

Another danger of smoking late in life is premature birth. Premature babies have high threshold mortality.

Passive smoking

When a person is near a smoker, he inhales tobacco smoke unintentionally. As shown medical research, the effect of nicotine on the fetus during passive smoking is the same as when a pregnant woman actively smokes cigarettes. Tobacco smoke contains harmful substances: nicotine, carbon monoxide, carbon monoxide, carcinogens, benzopyrene, radioactive components.

When a woman inhales all this, even at the stage of conception, both her immune system and the embryo (fetus) suffer. Toxic substances from tobacco smoke accumulate in the body, causing placental insufficiency, as a result of which the placenta does not perform its functions and the fetus does not receive normal amount nutrients, the child's hemoglobin level is increased. Because of this, the baby may be born with various congenital mental abnormalities, leading to Down syndrome.

Babies are born with low body weight, often get sick, and are emotionally unstable. In the background passive smoking a pregnant woman sometimes experiences placenta previa when it overlaps internal os cervix. This prevents a woman from giving birth to a baby. naturally. Risk increases internal bleeding, so doctors refer her to C-section, which is also dangerous due to its complications.

Smoking hashish or marijuana

For the offensive drug intoxication When smoking marijuana or hashish, special substances called cannabinoids are responsible. Once in the human body, they accumulate in the genitals, lungs, and brain. Long-term smoking of marijuana or hashish has a negative impact on intellectual abilities, processes of learning and memorizing information. When smoking narcotic substances combustion products enter the body in the same way as when smoking a regular cigarette, which affects the state of the respiratory system.

This suggests that the use of marijuana or hashish during pregnancy carries great danger for the development of the child in the womb. Since the drugs are illegal and not sold legally, the woman buying them cannot know what is in them. Instead of marijuana, the package may contain foreign substances that can cause not only complications during pregnancy, but also a threat to the life of the child and the expectant mother.

How to quit smoking

People who smoke are not as dependent on cigarettes as they think. They are more subordinate to the ritual that they constantly perform. A cigarette in hand, a cup of coffee in the morning, evening tea with your favorite TV series - it’s hard to refuse. When a woman understands that there is no addiction, it will be easy to quit smoking. Moreover, there is significant reason giving up a bad habit means the birth of a healthy baby. A few tips to make quitting smoking easier:

remember that this is not a sacrifice, refusal or coercion, you are just a non-smoking pregnant woman who is waiting for a healthy baby;
you are doing this not because of your husband, mother-in-law or mother, but for yourself;
don’t give yourself delays, don’t look for excuses like: I’ll start on the first of the month or on Monday, quit smoking here and now;
forget about rituals, don’t break cigarettes, don’t throw the pack out the window, theatrical effects won’t help;
create conditions that will prevent a breakdown from occurring, for example, go to the hospital for safekeeping or go live with your mother-in-law;
replace the bad habit with another ritual, find yourself any other game that is safe for health.

Early

Women who are not ready to give up smoking, but understand the need for this in the early stages of pregnancy, come up with different ways to do this not immediately. Advertising offers many products to help replace cigarettes that manufacturers claim are less harmful to health. You should know that sprays, chewing gum, patches and tablets containing nicotine are also prohibited from using while pregnant. The content of toxic substances in them can cause considerable harm to the development of the fetus.

Electronic cigarettes are not much different from the above-mentioned products. Although bad smell is absent, the cartridges still contain nicotine, so smoking them will not add health. You need to quit in the first stages of pregnancy immediately and forever. All aids only take up time, and during this period there can be irreversible consequences. All body systems are formed in the first trimester, so for the fetus every day is a huge leap in development. Smoking by a mother can at any time cause an irreversible disruption in these natural processes.

Is it possible to suddenly quit smoking?

Doctors' opinions were divided on this matter. You can hear from a gynecologist about the dangers abrupt refusal from smoking during pregnancy. This is due to the stress experienced by expectant mother when trying to combat a bad habit and a lack of nicotine in the body. This reaction supposedly affects the success of pregnancy. If we look at the issue in more detail, then a woman’s body cannot experience more stress when giving up a bad habit than, for example, from any other everyday inconvenience.

Nicotine addiction is greatly exaggerated, because many women have less than 5 years of smoking experience. Even with prolonged inhalation of nicotine, the stress from withdrawal is much less than that experienced by an expectant mother when thinking about possible illnesses in her child. For this reason, the other half of doctors are more categorical. They argue that each puff leads to a decrease in fetal movements in the womb and a decrease in its activity, so the process of weaning off cigarettes should be minimized.

Video

Smoking is harmful to everyone, and there is no point in talking about it again. Smoking women do not seem attractive to men, especially when it comes to planning a baby: no man will be happy that his child breathes tobacco while in the womb. However, many women in labor are not deterred by the fact that they themselves destroy a fetus that is not even born. Why are cigarettes dangerous in the early stages?

What gets into the body when smoking?

Cigarettes seem to many to be harmless dried tobacco wrapped in paper. That is why it is not always immediately clear why they are considered so dangerous. This idea of cigarettes is wrong: their composition is much richer, although this richness should not be called that.

When a person takes a puff, more than 4,000 types of dangerous substances enter his body. chemicals, among which:

Poisonous resins- carcinogenic particulate matter that settles in the lungs.
Arsenic- the leader in harmfulness among substances contained in cigarettes. It causes malfunctions cardiovascular system and provokes the development of tumors.
Benzene- a toxic component of organic origin that causes the most complex forms of cancer.
Polonium has a radiation effect on the body.
Formaldehyde- another toxic compound that has a detrimental effect on the lungs and respiratory system.

In addition to these, cigarettes contain other harmful substances that penetrate the bloodstream and all organs and systems of the body. It is generally accepted that the greatest harm the lungs are exposed, but with each puff the smoke easily penetrates the digestive organs, disrupting the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.

The most important thing is that not everyone knows: the thinner and “weaker” the cigarettes, the more dangerous components they contain.

Consequences of smoking in early pregnancy

- for mother

Not a single woman became more beautiful after starting to smoke. This is especially noticeable during pregnancy, when the body is weakened and everything negative phenomena can be traced without difficulty.

Smoking for an expectant mother is fraught with:

"Mustache" over upper lip, because it changes hormonal background, and from constant exposure to smoke, a black streak of hair can appear even in those women who did not have it before.
Diseases and tooth decay. The main blow is taken by the teeth and gums, and problems with oral cavity noticeable even during conversation. Teeth turn yellow, crumble, crumble, and differ in color. Gums look unhealthy.
Disturbance in the functioning of the respiratory system: tars clog the lungs, which causes shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, and it becomes more difficult to do familiar things.
Changes in the quality of blood vessels: they narrow, carbon monoxide accumulates in them, increasing the risk of thrombosis, atherosclerosis, heart attack and stroke.
Deterioration of health, decreased performance.
High risk of development oncological diseases. Statistically, the rate at which cancer develops in ordinary person, 10 times less than the same figure for a pregnant woman. Smoking can cause overgrowth malignant tumors.
Huge load on gastrointestinal tract, because they are getting worse chronic diseases, polyps appear.
Deterioration of the condition of tendons and ligaments, which will certainly be noticeable in the later stages of pregnancy, when the weight of the expectant mother increases significantly.
Increased risk of developing diabetes.
Deterioration of the skin condition, changes in color (grayish tint), dryness, premature wrinkles.

Finally, the sight of a pregnant woman smoking is disgusting, and when talking to her, an unpleasant, bitter smell of tobacco is felt.

- for a child

The child suffers even more in this situation, because the dose to which an adult is accustomed is destructive for a microscopic embryo.

If a mother smokes, her child may have problems:

Oxygen starvation (hypoxia), because when smoking, vasospasm occurs.
Lack of nutrients in the fetal cells, which is why the child cannot receive vitamins and useful substances for normal organ formation.
Delayed mental and physical development.
Hyperactivity and hyperattention syndrome.

These violations are the safest if you compare them with the main danger - spontaneous abortion. Smoking mom risks that a miscarriage will occur, a frozen pregnancy will be discovered, or premature labor will begin.

In addition, the risk increases birth defects heart, respiratory and skeletal system, disorders of mental activity and mental functions.

When and how should you quit?

Ideally, of course, there is no need to start. But if a woman is still susceptible to this bad habit, there are three scenarios:

Stop smoking before planning a pregnancy;
Stop smoking when you become aware of an unplanned pregnancy;
Don't quit smoking and face problems and difficulties.

The fact is that women have a certain set of eggs that are used up throughout their lives. In men, sperm are renewed every 30-40 days, but, alas, the original state of female reproductive cells cannot be returned.

It is necessary to quit smoking if you want to bear a child without problems and become the mother of a healthy and strong baby. IN best case scenario It is necessary to give up cigarettes at the stage of pregnancy planning.

If pregnancy has already happened, you cannot think for a minute. If your willpower allows, you can give up cigarettes once and for all (or at least for 9 months). In the absence of this, you need to gradually reduce the number of cigarettes smoked per day, eventually arriving at complete refusal from smoking. This method is more gentle, because it is not clear from what the embryo will receive more harm: from tobacco or enormous stress.

Smoking and pregnancy are incompatible concepts, especially if we're talking about about the first trimester. During this period, all the main organs and systems of the baby are formed; tobacco smoke and substances contained in cigarettes will inevitably leave their mark on the health of the unborn child. Expectant mother must take a responsible approach to bearing the baby and take care, first of all, of his health.

Especially for Elena TOLOCHIK

At any stage of pregnancy, inhaling tobacco smoke causes irreparable harm to both mother and baby. Loving mother will not risk the health of children for the sake of his death-bringing whim.

Smoking during pregnancy

Nicotine is the main harmful component of tobacco, it is a neurotropic poison, easily penetrates the brain and produces changes in it that lead to persistent addiction. The addiction is so persistent that many pregnant women sacrifice the health of the child for the sake of their pleasure.

Even before birth, the baby is poisoned with strong poisons, including carbon monoxide, benzopyrene, ammonia, lead, methane, methanol. A pregnant woman smokes with her baby, stupefying his brain, lungs, and heart with nicotine, causing mutations in the child’s genes. And these are not all the consequences of smoking during pregnancy.

Harm

For a child

The health of the child is laid down before the onset of pregnancy during its planning. A woman who smokes before conception deliberately creates unfavorable conditions for the formation of the egg and embryo.

As a result, the following are possible:

In children, the brain and heart are especially affected by nicotine.
When smoking during pregnancy, the fetus suffers from a lack of oxygen (hypoxia), caused by impaired oxygen transport, vasoconstriction, with every puff from the mother.
The fetal breathing movements stop in response to the mother's tightening, which increases the risk of sudden death in children in the first months of life.
Long-term consequences of hypoxia during intrauterine development are developmental delays and hyperactivity syndrome.

Complications of intrauterine oxygen deficiency due to cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental retardation. These destructive changes cannot be cured. A child who has survived the entire pregnancy in amniotic fluid saturated with nicotine has little chance of surviving.
In the video about the effect of smoking on the fetus during pregnancy:

For mom

When smoking, benzopyrene is released - a polycyclic hydrocarbon of the first hazard class, a carcinogen. Benzapyrene causes mutations due to its ability to form complexes with the DNA molecule.

When benzopyrene integrates into DNA, it separates the double strand. After which, each chain forms its own double helix, which leads to mutations. Including the p53 gene, which causes cancer.
It hurts great harm pregnancy, or rather both the mother and her future offspring. The child may not necessarily be born with a visible mutation. It is impossible to predict in advance exactly how maternal smoking will affect the child, what genetic disease A caring mother provides for her baby.

Since smoking affects the severity of toxicosis, pregnancy is accompanied by headaches, swelling, and high blood pressure.

Alarming statistics

Total number smokers in Russia make up 27%, 40% of them are girls school age. The total number increases annually by 1.5%. The lungs of expectant mothers, already from adolescence, begin to accumulate radioactive polonium-210, lead-210, nicotine, arsenic, methanol, toluene, and hexamine.

Here are a few more numbers:

40% of smokers do not give up tobacco during pregnancy.
In 5% of cases, a smoker's pregnancy ends in intrauterine fetal death.
Risk pathological pregnancy 2 times higher.
Sudden infant death occurs in 90% of cases in mothers who smoke.
Premature births occur 2 times more often in women addicted to tobacco, and early miscarriages occur 1.7 times more often than in women who do not use tobacco.
Spontaneous abortions in smokers occur 4.6 times more often.
Stillbirths among smokers are 30% higher, children are born with less weight and reduced lung function.

With each puff, a pregnant smoker supplies her baby with 18% of what she receives. Of these 18%, only 10% is excreted from the fetus’s body, which indicates the accumulation of poisons in the child’s body. The nicotine content in the blood of the fetus is higher than that of a pregnant woman who smokes.

The likelihood of asthma in children of a mother who smokes before and during pregnancy is 1.5 times higher than in a non-smoking parent, and if both mother and grandmother smoked, then the risk of asthma in the child increases 2.6 times.

The risk of mental retardation in a child born by a lover of a cigarette or hookah ranges from 50% to 85%, if the smoker did not stop poisoning the child until the end of pregnancy. In the latter case, the child will also be deaf.

Doctors' opinion

Academician F. G. Uglov, a famous surgeon who lived 104 years, who considered smoking a slow suicide, had a negative attitude towards the fashion for female smoking. Due to the nature of his work, he had to see the consequences of smoking every day, performing operations to remove malignant tumors, observing metastases spreading throughout the body.

Despite the busy work schedule, Fedor Grigorievich Uglov special attention devoted to the problem of smoking during pregnancy. He pointed out that a common complication of smoking is spontaneous abortion at up to 36 weeks, which is 2 times more common in smokers.

Children of a smoking mother are developmentally delayed, often get sick, and absolutely all of them start smoking adolescence. The academician noted an increased mortality rate during childbirth in women who smoke, and a high risk of using contraceptives in combination with smoking.

Reproduction doctors note the dangers of not only active, but also passive smoking, both during pregnancy and when planning it. This habit not only reduces the likelihood of natural conception, but subsequently becomes the cause of failures in the IVF protocol at the stage of fertilization of the egg and attachment of the embryo to the uterus.

To increase the viability of embryos, they are placed in a special anti-stress environment, which increases the chance of a healthy child being born.

Considering the above, we can definitely say that smoking during pregnancy will harm not only the baby, but also the mother herself, complicating the lives of both in the future.

How to quit smoking

An attempt to say goodbye to dangerous habit The most heavy smokers have undertaken it at least once in their lives. To help women, and seemingly for good purposes, electronic cigarettes and nicotine-free hookahs appeared on sale.

Electronic cigarette

When advertising, manufacturers forget to mention that the main danger in tobacco is nicotine, disease-causing, gene mutations transmitted to offspring.

And most importantly, the electronic cigarette does not eliminate mental dependence, nothing in the life of a smoker changes. The physical addiction to nicotine will not go away either.

A woman who smokes e-cigarettes will go through the same stages of addiction to tobacco smoking as when using a regular cigarette. The declared composition of the cartridges, as it turned out during inspection electronic cigarettes American quality control organization (FDA), did not coincide with the actual one and contained carcinogens.

The danger of consuming nicotine when using an electronic gadget is no lower than when smoking a regular cigarette. Thanks to the calming effect of advertising, a smoker who switches to an electronic surrogate will smoke more confidently and more often.

Hookah

Any method of using tobacco is dangerous. A hookah with a tobacco mixture or even without nicotine is no exception. The most dangerous carcinogen is benzopyrene and carbon monoxide is formed during the combustion of any substance.

And inhaling combustion products of aromatic mixtures of unknown composition or with unknown properties can be no less harmful than smoking tobacco. Such dangerous product combustion, like carbon monoxide, is highly toxic. When smoking one hookah, the same amount of it enters the body as from smoking 20 cigarettes in an hour, therefore, to the question of whether it is possible to smoke in this way during pregnancy, the answer is a categorical no.

When smoking a hookah with nicotine, aromatic additives mask the taste of tobacco. Under the cherry, vanilla taste, nicotine, a dangerous product of its metabolism, cotinine, arsenic, and chromium, penetrate into the body.

There are no safe smoking mixtures, therefore, even fearing stress, no matter what the deadline. Human lungs are designed by nature to inhale clean air. No living being will enjoy inhaling combustion products containing poisonous gases.

Smoking when planning pregnancy

Women who smoke are more likely to face the problem of infertility. This deviation is registered in them 2 times more often than in women who did not smoke tobacco. Difficulty conceiving occurs as a result toxic damage ovaries, disorders of egg formation.

The outer membrane of the eggs (pellucid) in a smoker thickens and becomes a difficult obstacle for sperm to overcome. Having once arisen, this quality of pellucidity is fixed and becomes the cause of idiopathic (unexplained) infertility.

Even if the fusion of sperm and egg has taken place, it is difficult for the fertilized egg to implant into the wall of the uterus, and for the embryo to develop in the thickened membrane.

When the pellucida is thickened, infertility often cannot be eliminated even with the help of in vitro fertilization (IVF). To treat infertility in these cases, they resort to the ICSI method - intracytoplasmic injection of sperm into the egg.

Thickening of the pellucida is more typical for women over 35 years of age, and with smoking, these phenomena are also observed in young women. The changes are irreversible, because all the eggs in a woman have been deposited since childhood.

Smoking causes disorders menstrual cycles, shortens the duration of childbearing age.

Doctors' opinion on smoking during pregnancy:

What does nicotine addiction lead to?

The amniotic fluid of smokers is saturated with nicotine. Pathologists say that smoking women who die during childbirth have amniotic fluid publish strong smell nicotine

The child develops in a toxic environment, is born weak, with insufficient birth weight, pathologies of the lungs, heart, and central nervous system.

IN early age The baby is receiving treatment for endless bronchitis, otitis, and acute respiratory infections. Such children get pneumonia more often than usual and take many injections.

As adults, they will experience shortness of breath, problems with physical education at school, and with their studies. They will most likely have to face infertility and undergo long-term treatment in order to give birth to a child.

All these problems arise during pregnancy, in every case when a woman takes up a cigarette, depriving the child of health, reducing his life expectancy with each puff.