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Is smoking a few cigarettes dangerous?

Quoting a four-cigarette-per-day maximum does not deal with the issue of stopping for life and gives your wife permission to smoke. There is no safe level. Unless your wife stops completely, she is more likely to increase her smoking after the baby is born, thus creating second-hand smoking hazards for you, your baby and any future pregnancies.

Study after study of the negative effects of smoking in pregnancy have found that the miscarriage risk is higher. This risk is increased the more cigarettes smoked per day. Smoking women are twice as likely to suffer a miscarriage than non-smokers.

Mothers who smoke have infants whose birth weights average less than non-smokers. Smoking lowers birth weight by decreasing foetal growth and gestational age at delivery. There is also evidence that smoking mothers have a significantly greater incidence of perinatal deaths.

Smoking affects the pregnancy in various ways. It constricts the blood vessels, resulting in less blood flowing through the placenta. Carbon monoxide causes inactivation of foetal haemoglobin, decreasing the foetus’ uptake of oxygen. It reduces appetite, thereby reducing caloric intake. It also decreases maternal plasma volume.

When babies of smoking mothers were observed with ultrasound, after one cigarette, nicotine was noted to increase maternal blood pressure and heart rate, as well as foetal heart rate and foetal aortic and umbilical vein blood flow.

In addition, nicotine is found in the breast milk of smoking mothers. It may interfere with the milk letdown as well as total milk yield. After birth, exposure to

second-hand smoke causes a significantly higher rate of respiratory disease in the infant and infantile colic. More infants of smoking mothers die of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome or cot death) than those of non-smoking mothers.