Too Many Expectant Moms and Dads Smoking, Drinking, and Using Marijuana

What This Means to You

If you're pregnant, you've likely been told by your doctor, friends, family members, maybe even total strangers that smoking, drinking, and doing drugs are a major no-no. But maybe you've wondered why and what, exactly, using these substances can do to your baby. So, here's the basic gist of the hazards behind each:

Alcohol One of the most common known causes of mental and physical birth defects, alcohol produces more severe abnormalities in a developing fetus than heroin, cocaine, or marijuana. It may seem harmless to have a glass of wine at dinner or a mug of beer out with friends, but no one has determined what's a "safe amount" of alcohol to drink during pregnancy or just how much can cause the serious physical, developmental, and functional problems seen in fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

Even moderate alcohol intake or occasional binge drinking can possibly damage a baby's developing nervous system. That's why it's always wise to err on the side of caution and not drink any alcohol at all while you're pregnant. If you had a drink or two before you knew you were expecting (as many women do), don't worry too much about it. But your best bet is to not drink any more alcohol for the rest of your pregnancy.

If you're an alcoholic or think you may have a drinking problem, talk to your doctor about it. And be honest about how much alcohol you've consumed during your pregnancy and when, so the doctor can get a better idea of how your unborn baby may have been affected.

Drugs Pregnant women who use drugs may be placing their unborn babies at risk for:

• premature birth
• poor growth
• birth defects
• behavior and learning problems
• being born addicted to those drugs

If you've used any drugs at any time during your pregnancy, tell your doctor — even if you've quit, your unborn child could still be at risk for health problems. If you're still using drugs, talk to your doctor for help on how to quit now.

Cigarettes When you smoke during pregnancy, you pass nicotine and carbon monoxide to your growing baby and seriously increase the risks of:

• stillbirth
• prematurity
• low birth weight
• asthma and other respiratory problems
• childhood cancer, leukemia, lymphomas, and brain tumors
• sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

Regular exposure to secondhand smoke is hazardous to fetuses, too, and can cause problems like low birth weight and slowed growth. Secondhand smoke is also extremely unhealthy for children of all ages — it contains 250-plus chemicals proven to be toxic or carcinogenic (cancer-causing), from arsenic and ammonia to hydrogen cyanide. What's worse, concentrations of many of these chemicals are higher in secondhand smoke than in the smoke inhaled by smokers.

So, once you have your baby, it's essential to stay smoke-free and make sure others around your little one do the same — or at least take their bad habit elsewhere.

If you're pregnant and having a hard time quitting smoking, drinking, or doing drugs, talk to your doctor about how to get the help you need to stop now and stay substance-abuse-free in the future — for your sake and your baby's. And if it's your partner who's having problems, urge him to get help, too, to give your little one a safer, healthier, and more positive home environment.

Source: "Men's and Women's Patterns of Substance Abuse Around Pregnancy," Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care, March 2008.