Smoking Cessations for Pregnant Women

Pregnant women smoking cigarettes is a sight that is shocking to many. It is easy to condemn or look down on women who smoke during pregnancy but do not be too quick to judge. Women who smoke when they are pregnant are not bad people; they simply have a bad habit. However, like any other bad habit, the smoking habit can be broken, and there is no better time to break this deadly habit then during pregnancy.

There is no doubt, smoking cigarettes when pregnant is dangerous, and even life threatening for the babies being carried by pregnant smokers. There is only about a mountain of clinical evidence that proves smoking during pregnancy leads to low birth weight, pre-term delivery, and even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The point of this article is not to preach to expecting mothers and scare them with statistics and gory details of how smoking can harm their babies. We all know that smoking is something that must be avoided like the plague by pregnant women. Smoking, as stated above, is a habit that can be broken. Let us take a few moments to discuss just how pregnant women can successfully break their smoking habit.

Women smoke for different reasons than men do. They light up more because of psychological reasons such as the scent or sight of tobacco smoke. Women are also more social creatures than men, and many women often find themselves lighting up just to get together with their girl friends. Weight control is also an important issue for females, and cigarette smoking is often seen as one way to achieve that.

While women are still addicted to nicotine just as men are, the reasons for a woman's smoking may be completely different from a man's. That could be why traditional stop smoking methods such as nicotine replacement therapy may not work as well on women. While something like nicotine gum may be the perfect solution for a nicotine-addicted man, a woman who smokes for social reasons and weight control may find that nicotine replacement therapy does nothing to address the psychological causes for her smoking.

Women seem to have more of a problem with smoking because they are now expected to work and assume their role as a wife and mother, so stress is fundamentally the reason we find more women smoking. There are those of us who feel motivated with the daily stressors we encounter, while the rest of us do not respond well to life-altering changes and events. Women who are smokers are often eager to find relief from everyday stresses and daily routines.

Further, we may notice that many women are smoking more than men are because it’s been said that smoking helps to promote a means of weight loss and weight management. Much of our modern society has placed a great deal of merit on the superiority of women who have and maintain a much more slender appearance. There seems to be some validity in the belief that smoking cigarettes suppress the appetite, since the nerve endings in our taste buds and nasal passages deaden over time in response to food.

Many of us may have longed for a cigarette in an effort to eradicate empty feelings or boredom. Though many of us look forward to having social exchanges with other people, there are some women who aren’t as outgoing and look to smoke a cigarette in an effort to avoid being social. Since quite a few of us have an aversion to cigarette smoke, smoking offers women some form of relief from social activities. For those who are introverted, smoking may replace the need for friendship although the previous appeal to smoking is currently decreasing.

However, smoking for women causes many problems.

Women smoke for many different reasons in addition to being physically addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes. When you are thinking about how smoking affects your health, it can help to know why you smoke.

The following are some of the reasons that women smoke:

• To cope with stress or anger
• To avoid eating or to control weight
• To cope with poverty or unemployment
• Smoking can seem like an old friend
• Smoking can be a reward after completing a task
• To take a break from caring for others, such as children or elderly parents
• To take a break from work responsibilities
• To cope with relationship problems
• To cope with feelings of powerlessness
• To cope with the loneliness or boredom of social isolation
• To maintain social connections
• Women who smoke have a higher risk of miscarriage
• Smokers are more likely to have smaller babies.
• Smoking for women leads to early menopause
• The most important thing here is that women smokers have around 72 percent of the fertility of non-smokers. The studies have also proven that women smokers have a great problem in fertilization and implantation of the zygote.
• Teenage smoking also effects you menstrual cycle. It can cause early menopause in your young age. It is seen that smoking women get menopause two three years early then non-smoking women. This is due to the fact of large amount of harmful chemicals present in cigarette, which affects your reproductive system. However, in older women who start smoking after their menopausal stages face the problem of hip fractures and making their bones weak and unhealthy.
• It is important to note that health problems in women related to smoking are very serious. It is seen that smoking causes more breathing problems in women as compared to men. Researches tell us that women smokers reported higher rates of respiratory problems than men with prevalence of asthma in women. The asthma rate was more than one in ten among those women smoking 20 cigarettes a day. Female smokers also face the problem of brittle bones and aging skin. Yes, it is seen that women smokers get wrinkles on their face and they start looking old at an early age.
• The effect of smoking on women’s cardiovascular health begins to show more sex differences. Smoking effects the heart of women immensely this is realized later in life. Among current female smokers, the chance of breast cancer is also increased.
  There are about 1.1 billion of tobacco consumers in the world today. The World Health Organization indicates that by 2025 the number of smokers would increase to 1.64 billion looking at the increase-taking place in developing countries. Four million people in the world die every year from tobacco related diseases.
• With all these influences cessation for women is not an easy task. While in developed countries women are provided with cessation programs but such programs were not that much effective in providing complete support to the smoking women. WHO and other such organizations are trying their best to help women smokers and aware them of the harmful effects that can ruin their life and body.

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