Before pregnancy
Getting pregnant?
If you want to eliminate all risks of smoking, the safest choice is to quit smoking from the moment you try to get pregnant.
You often don’t know you are pregnant until after a few weeks. If you continue smoking, you can therefore harm the unborn child at an early stage.
Moreover, smoking can reduce fertility in both women and men. Of the women who want to become pregnant, about 80 percent succeed within a year. For women who smoke, it often takes longer to conceive. Research also shows that smokers require twice as many IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatments to conceive as non-smokers.
If you want to rule out all risks, the safest choice is to stop drinking from the moment you try to get pregnant. This applies not only to the woman, but also to the man.
Why not drink?
You often do not know you are pregnant until after a few weeks. If you continue drinking alcohol, you can therefore harm the unborn child at an early stage.
Moreover, drinking one or more glasses of alcohol per day can already reduce fertility in both women and men. As a result, it can take longer for a woman to become pregnant. Regularly drinking heavily (more than 20 glasses per week) can even cause a man to become impotent.
The risk of miscarriage is also higher if the woman, man, or both drink alcohol. Alcohol can damage the woman’s egg or the man’s sperm. After fertilization, this can lead to a non-viable child, resulting in a miscarriage.
The more both partners drink, the greater the risks of miscarriage or reduced fertility.
During pregnancy
When you smoke during pregnancy, your unborn baby faces various risks. The risks listed below also apply to passive smoking:
Miscarriage
Women who smoke have a higher risk of miscarriage. One in every ten pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. In the Netherlands, approximately 20,000 women experience this every year. Smoking – both active smoking and passive smoking – excessive coffee and/or alcohol consumption, and being overweight increase the risk of miscarriage.
Premature birth
Smoking doubles the risk of premature birth, meaning the baby is born before the 37th week of pregnancy. Children born prematurely often have a difficult start because their organs are not yet fully developed. Problems with breathing, circulation, and oxygen supply to the brain and other vital organs can result. Infections, feeding problems, and hypothermia also occur more frequently.
Lower baby weight
Roken door de moeder geeft een grotere kans op een lager geboortegewicht van het kind. Vrouwen die de hele zwangerschap blijven roken, krijgen een baby die zo’n 150-250 gram lichter weegt dan een kind met een normaal geboortegewicht van 2500 tot 4500 gram.
Maternal smoking increases the risk of a lower birth weight for the child. Women who continue to smoke throughout their pregnancy have a baby that weighs about 150-250 grams less than a child with a normal birth weight of 2,500 to 4,500 grams.
Placental detachment
Placental abruption means that the placenta detaches from the uterus. This is the most serious cause of vaginal bleeding after week 28. Normally, the placenta detaches from the uterine wall after the baby is born. With placental abruption, this happens before birth. As a result, the baby no longer receives oxygen. Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of placental abruption, as do alcohol and the use of certain drugs.
Consequences for development
If a woman smokes during pregnancy, the baby has a higher risk of various health problems. For example, a child of a smoking mother has a higher risk of developing a cleft lip, as well as respiratory problems and behavioral disorders.
Cot death
SIDS is a general term for the sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy baby while sleeping. The risk of this is higher if the mother smokes during pregnancy. However, there is also a greater chance that the baby will die of SIDS if they are exposed to secondhand smoke after birth.
What is the drinking advice?
If you are pregnant, the safest choice for your baby is not to drink any alcohol at all. Alcohol is a toxic substance that can be harmful to your unborn child. The risks and the severity of the damage increase the more often you drink and the more you drink per occasion. However, no amount is safe.
Why not drink?
Imagine that you are pregnant and have drunk alcohol. Then the ratio of alcohol to blood in your body is almost the same as in your baby’s body.
If you have had a glass of wine, your blood alcohol level is approximately 0.3. But so is your baby’s. Alcohol has a very different effect on a baby than on an adult. A baby’s liver cannot yet break down alcohol. Therefore, alcohol remains in your child’s blood longer than in yours. In addition, an unborn baby is developing rapidly for nine months. This development can be disrupted by alcohol. That is why it is better not to drink at all when you are pregnant. What if you have been drinking after all?
What are the risks?
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy carries various risks. These risks depend on the amount you drink, or on what is developing in the child’s body at the moment you are drinking. The main risks are:
- Damage to the baby’s brain or other organs
- A premature baby
- A baby that is too light (low birth weight)
- Risk that the baby will have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
