Cigarette smoking produces a number of abnormalities in a mother's body. First, cyanide (a strong poison) is produced from smoking. This by-product from smoking goes directly to your tissues and to the tissues of your baby, producing hypoxia (lack of oxygen) in the individual cells.

In addition to this, nicotine causes constriction of the blood vessels of your body, decreasing the amount of blood flowing through the placenta and adding to the hypoxia produced by the cyanide.

Compounding the action of the cyanide and the nicotine is the fact when you smoke, your blood stream absorbs the smoke-caused carbon monoxide from your lungs. When your red blood cells are carrying carbon monoxide, they cannot carry as much oxygen, increasing even more dramatically the hypoxia that is already affecting your baby from the cyanide and nicotine.


The lack of oxygen that results from all these effects literally strangles your baby. This oxygen shortage for your child occurs during the most important time of growth in his entire lifetime. The decreased oxygen supply to the babies of the smoking mothers causes such babies, on the average, to weigh about one-pound less than the babies of nonsmokers.

Imagine someone choking with a rope, limiting the amount of oxygen so much that you lost about one-tenth of your body weight. This is a strong illustration, but what a smoker does to her unborn child is a strong act of selfishness and irresponsibility.

I recommend that if you smoke, you either do not get pregnant or you stop smoking before you get pregnant.