LEARN  NEW WAYS TO STOP SMOKING

Smoking impairs sperm motility and normal development, increasing chances of infertility, miscarriage and birth defects. In the U.S., about 1 in 8 women smokes during pregnancy. Smoking may lower the oxygen available to the baby, which can cause the baby to grow more slowly and gain less weight in the womb.

Smoking Raises Risk for Oral Clefts

Oral clefts are birth defects that take place in the oral-facial area often the lip, the roof of the mouth (hard palate), or the soft tissue in the back of the mouth (soft palate). Because of birth defects study, we now know that smokers' babies may be more likely to have cleft lip and/or cleft palate.

One study looked at a gene that helps in the development of the palate and mouth.

They resulted that:

• Women who smoked during pregnancy were almost twice as likely to have babies with oral clefts. The more cigarettes the mother smoked, the higher the risk.
• The danger of smoking was even greater for the 1 in 7 babies who carry a cleft-susceptibility gene. Babies with this gene were 8 times as likely to have oral clefts if their mothers smoked. Those born to nonsmoking mothers with this gene were not more likely to have an oral cleft.
• Nonsmoking mothers who had been around secondhand smoke had only a small, if any, increased risk of having an oral cleft. But if both the mother and father smoked, there was a greater chance that the baby had an oral cleft.

Smoking and Other Birth Defects

• Heart and limb defects In other birth defects studied, the connection with smoking is not as simple. For example, there was a somewhat higher risk for certain heart defects and limb defects, but only if both parents smoked. Perhaps smoking patterns are different when both. parents smoke, or maybe there are other behaviors that are more common among smokers.
• Down syndrome Babies with Down syndrome whose mothers smoked during the first trimester had twice the risk for heart defects compared to babies with Down syndrome whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. Breast cancer Women who are exposed to tobacco smoke (smoking and secondhand smoke) every day are two to three times more likely to develop breast cancer.

If this is not enough, different studies have shown relationship between the maternal cigarette smoking and the several disorders including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, neurological and behavioral disturbances. So i's important to avoid smoking while pregnant.