Pregnant Women Must Give Up Smoking as Soon as Possible

According to a new batch of scientific studies, women who are pregnant and do not give up smoking until their 15th week of pregnancy are 300 percent more likely than those who do to give birth prematurely, and also twice as likely to have small babies. The research, published recently in the online journal BMJ, calls on physicians to make them completely aware of this situation, so as to avoid thousands or more babies being born ahead of time each year.

University of Auckland investigator Dr Lesley McCowan, who has been the lead author of the BMJ paper, argues that women who regularly smoke should give up the habit, or at least put in on “hold” as early in the pregnancy as possible. The expert adds that the 15-week “deadline” is the date after which statistics show a sharp increase in potential damages to the baby, if the mother continues to smoke. Among the most severe risks associated with this nasty habit, studies have included stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, premature birth, small babies, and neonatal death.

“Results are of considerable public health importance. The data suggest that the adverse effects of smoking on these late pregnancy outcomes may be largely reversible if smoking is ceased early in pregnancy, offering an important incentive for pregnant women who smoke to become smoke-free early in pregnancy,” experts write in the conclusion of the new research. They also stress that women who failed to give up smoking were more likely to do so on account of socio-economic factors, such as wealth, or lack thereof, alcohol abuse and education.

More than 2,500 pregnant women have been studied for this new investigation, and researchers have also gathered background data on each and every one of them, so as to get a glimpse of why they behave the way they do and why they willingly renounce their own babies' futures. Despite the fact that their personal physicians made them aware of the risks involved with smoking during pregnancy, the women that failed to quit the habit refused to listen and said that they did not approve of their pieces of advice.