Why Smoking During Pregnancy Is Dangerous for Your Baby

There are so many dangers to your unborn child if you are smoking during pregnancy. If there was ever a right time to quit smoking, it is when you find out you are pregnant. Whatever distress it causes you to quit, your baby's health is worth it.

There will be many positive health benefits for you and you will feel so much better. During the stressful time of pregnancy you have to be committed. There are many hidden dangers to smoking while you are pregnant.

The worst effect of smoking during pregnancy can be the death of your child. Second hand smoke is also very dangerous and increases your child's risk of dying from SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome. SIDS is the death of a child less than one year of age with no apparent cause of death. So that is obviously an extremely serious risk that a smoking pregnant mother is taking with her child. With more education and awareness of the risks, we believe more smoking mothers would work to quit smoking.

A baby can suffer from cleft palate or cleft lip.

The reality is that both are considered birth defects and either one or both are more possible in your baby due to the mother smoking while pregnant. Before birth, a cleft in any tissue is the result of incomplete closing during development. The social stigma may have a negative effect on you as well as your child.

You will see there are many other risks too that are associated with smoking while pregnant. You may not realize that a good number of mental retardation, learning disabilities and even cerebral palsy have been linked to preterm smoking. Smoking while pregnant has been shown to contribute to the enormous amount of sudden death cases in infants.

The effects of smoking during pregnancy are serious, severe, and potentially fatal for your unborn child. Most of the known effects passed onto your baby are not fatal. However, you will be seriously compromising the health of your baby when you smoke. Your child's behavior may be adversely affected as well as other organs in the body.