Smoking in pregnancy

When you smoke you breathe in more than 4,000 chemicals from the cigarette. The smoke goes from your lungs into your bloodstream. That blood flows to your placenta and umbilical cord, right into your baby's tiny body. This causes your baby to struggle for oxygen.

One of the chemicals found in cigarettes is carbon monoxide, a dangerous chemical that gets into your bloodstream. This restricts the supply of oxygen that is essential for your baby's healthy growth and development.

If you smoke during your pregnancy, the nicotine in your blood stream will pass through to your baby, which means when they are born, they will go through nicotine withdrawal. This can make your baby stressed and irritable and it may be difficult to stop them crying.

Smoking while you are pregnant also increases the risk of your baby dying from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) by at least 25%.

Many people are choosing to use e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking. While these products are not risk free and the vapour may contains some toxins, these are at lower levels than in cigarette smoke.

However, little is known about any potential risks of e-cigarette vapour to your baby and mums-to-be are therefore recommended to use one of the licensed stop smoking medications such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to help reduce any withdrawal symptoms when quitting smoking.

If you do want to use an e-cigarette – maybe because you’ve tried other methods without success – there is lots of advice and support available from your local Stop Smoking Service. The most important thing for you and your baby is to stop smoking.