Every cigarette a pregnant woman smokes in the third trimester subtracts 20 grams from her baby

I am not a smoker and I never have been, so I cannot say that quitting smoking is more or less difficult, but I know more than one mother who, after several failed attempts, quit smoking, overnight, at the moment in which she found out pregnant. Others, on the other hand, have tried and not yet. And more difficult is when the couple, also a smoker, does not even try.

But it’s important, quite important, manage to quit smoking if you are pregnant, because in addition to the various symptoms that a baby born by a smoking mother may have, such as withdrawal syndrome, increased nervousness and irritability, risk of affecting her future fertility, among other things, low birth weight is added, which has been quantified in 20 grams less per daily cigarette that the mother smokes during the third trimester.

It is not that smoking is only negative in that quarter and nothing happens in the previous two, it is that when the weight is most affected, it is precisely in the months that the baby has to gain more weight. In previous months, as I comment, it can affect many other things, such as the formation of the nervous system and other organs.

These data have been obtained thanks to a doctoral thesis carried out at the Catholic University of Valencia (UCV) "San Vicente Mártir". The study, entitled "Anthropometric, hematological, obstetric and toxic variables that include birth weight: predictive model" has obtained, as a thesis, the qualification cum laude.

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To carry out the study, 140 pregnant women were followed up and it was observed that the children of smoking mothers suffered that decrease in the final birth weight. According to Rafael Vila, researcher of the thesis:

It is an amount high enough to worry if the baby could be affected by low weight.

But 20 grams are many, right?

Yes, but we are talking about daily cigarettes. That is, if a woman smokes a single cigarette every day during the third trimester your baby will weigh 20 grams less than it would have weighed not to smoke it. If a woman smokes 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, her baby will weigh about 200 grams less.

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As Vila says, if we talk about a baby from 3 to 4 kg the reduction will not be as problematic as it can be for a baby who plans to weigh 2,400 kg, for example, or less. For these babies 200 grams are very important. But of course, as we said at the beginning, weight is not everything. It is interesting for a baby to come as healthy as possible and then have a healthier life as possible. If your mother has been smoking, it is no longer "as healthy as possible", and if after birth she continues to do so, the risk of respiratory infections is added risk of sudden death.

Seriously, no kidding. Tobacco is harmful to anyone who smokes, but it is worse for babies, who do not even have the possibility to choose whether to smoke or not.