The word 'Mother' is synonymous with care, love and all good
things on the earth. However, smoking mothers can be
inadvertently killing and maiming their children - born and
unborn. Shocked? It's true. Smoking mothers are potentially
gifting their children with lung cancer and many other similarly
devastating diseases through second hand smoke. Pregnant women
harm their unborn babies directly in the womb.
Besides the above horrifying facts, here are more unsettling
reasons to bear in mind when smoking. It will not only interfere
with your health, it will also interfere with the health of your
unborn child:
1. First of all, smoking makes it hard to conceive. Reports show
that fertility in both men and women are heavily affected by
smoking. In women, smoking interferes with the egg movement
toward the fallopian tubes as well as the hormones that are
produced during pregnancy; while in men, it lowers the semen
count, and the motility of the sperm. In many cases smoking also
affects the shape of the sperm making it incapable of
penetrating the egg.
2. Children born of smoking parents potentially inherit a low
fertility syndrome and suffer from a great number of infertility
problems.
3. Smoking in many cases is the main cause for impotency in men
as it interferes with the blood supply to the penis.
4. The baby in the womb of a pregnant smoking woman gets its
nicotine addiction right from pre-birth as its blood imbibes the
nicotine that the mother's blood shares with it; hence it is
more likely that when born they would become a smoker - and also
contract all smoking related diseases.
5. In rare cases the placenta is directly affected by smoking
causing a miscarriage of the foetus, or death in the womb.
6. Babies of smoking mothers will be most likely to be born
premature and under weight.
7. Babies are also likely to have less developed vital organs
than their counterparts (babies of non-smoking mothers) - there
is a great likelihood that these babies have an undeveloped
liver which will affect them throughout their lives.
8. The babies of pregnant smoking women have poor lung functions
right from birth.
9. These babies are twice as prone to die from
sudden-infant-death (SID) syndrome than the babies of
non-smoking women.
10. The babies of those women who smoked 15-20 cigarettes a day
are more likely to be sickly.
Any one of the above causes should be sufficient enough to make
you quit smoking - if not for yourself, for your little miracle
that is being formed in your womb. Read the above lines again,
and then once more - is that what you want to give to your most
precious creation? Would you really be comfortable thinking that
you are voluntarily and consistently harming your child even
before their born? These are some questions that you should to
ponder seriously.
Get in touch with your doctor today and enlist his/her help to
quitting smoking. You owe it to your child to be healthy and
give them a healthy beginning to the start of their life. As a
mother, you are the nurturing contact of the child - do not
become the poison in your own child's life.
About the author:
Jared Mitchell manages quit smoking websites such as http://www.gumauctions.com.
Use nicotine gum to help relieve the effects of quitting.
