Facts about smoking during pregnancy for you and your baby
Find out about the effects of smoking in pregnancy and the harms it can cause for you and your baby.
- Smoking during pregnancy leads to a greater risk of your baby needing to be taken into intensive care.
- Smoking in pregnancy significantly increases the chance of having a premature and low birth weight baby. Low birth weight does not make delivery any easier. Babies born with low birth weight are more likely to have negative health outcomes, which include:
- Increased risk of delayed development and/or disease
- Birth defects
- Being harder to settle and have feeding problems
- Middle ear infections or permanent hearing impairment
- Long term damage to the baby’s health, including lungs and brain.
- There are also many risks to the mother, in addition to the health concerns and impacts associated with smoking, which include:
- Miscarriage or stillbirth
- Ectopic pregnancy
- Problems with the placenta, and
- Pre-eclampsia
It’s best to quit smoking before you become pregnant, or as early as possible during your pregnancy.
Remember - quitting smoking at any point in your pregnancy will reduce the health risks to yourself and your baby.
Using incentives to quit smoking
Incentives can be a big help in successfully motivating you to quit and stay on track. We’ve listed a few to get you started.
- Calculate how much you can save if you were not spending it on cigarettes. While this might be tricky due to budget constraints, set a goal amount (even around $100 – 200) and put towards a gift for yourself as a reward for your determination, or essentials for your baby.
- Instead of smoking, replace the moment with something else and try to avoid or manage your smoking trigger moments with a positive distraction, such as making a smoothie or going for a walk.
There are plenty of variations you could try! Use the above suggestions as inspiration and modify to suit your lifestyle and situation. Visit ‘ten tips to quit smoking’ to find what quitting method works best for you.
Using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) while pregnant
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, it’s best to try to quit without using NRT.
However, if you find that isn’t working, or you are still getting nicotine cravings that are leading you back to smoking, there is the option of using oral Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT). With the correct dose, there is less nicotine in NRT products compared to smoking, and they do not contain the harmful substances found in tobacco smoke.
NRT is always safer than smoking.