Effect of Smoking during Pregnancy 1

Thousands of women with high-risk pregnancies realize their dreams of a healthy baby. But even after all those successes, there's still one situation that truly scares him: a pregnant woman who can't quit smoking.

"Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies," says Welch, who's the chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan. He's seen the complications far too many times: babies born prematurely, babies born too small, babies who die before they can be born at all.

In his view, pregnancies would be safer and babies would be healthier if pregnant smokers could somehow swap their habit for a serious disease such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
"I can control those conditions with medications," Welch says. But when a pregnant woman smokes, he says, nothing can protect her baby from danger.

Why is it so dangerous to smoke during pregnancy?

Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including truly nasty things like cyanide, lead, and at least 60 cancer-causing compounds. When you smoke during pregnancy, that toxic brew gets into your bloodstream, your baby's only source of oxygen and nutrients.


While none of those 4,000-plus chemicals is good foryour baby (you would never add a dollop of lead and cyanide to a bowl of strained peaches), two compounds are especially harmful: nicotine and carbon monoxide. These two toxins account for almost every smoking-related complication in pregnancy, says ob-gyn James Christmas, director of Maternal Fetal Medicine for Commonwealth Perinatal Associates at Henrico Doctors' Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

The most serious complications – including stillbirth, premature delivery, and low birth weight – can be chalked up to the fact that nicotine and carbon monoxide work together to reduce your baby's supply of oxygen.

Nicotine chokes off oxygen by narrowing blood vessels throughout your body, including the ones in the umbilical cord. It's a little like forcing your baby to breathe through a narrow straw. To make matters worse, the red blood cells that carry oxygen start to pick up molecules of carbon monoxide instead. Suddenly, that narrow straw doesn't even hold as much oxygen as it should.