Obviously I would encourage you to quit smoking first and foremost. Smoking can decrease milk supply and smoking moms tend to wean sooner. However, it is benficial for a baby of a mom who smokes to be breastfed. Nicotine is better absorbed through the respitory tract then from breastmilk. Breastfeeding can provide protection from infection and asthma. Formula fed babies of moms who smoke also excrete nicotine and cotinine in their urine and have a higher rate of infection and asthma. The best advice I can offer would be NEVER smoke around or near the baby. Mom should change clothes, wash hands and not to smoke within 2 hours of nursing.
for your kids, will you not try to stop? do you want to die young and leave your children's side sooner? or even be the reason (tho a small chance..) to give them cancer?
Yes, do everything you can to stop this nasty, worthless habit. It's not good for you or your baby, and can only lead to other health issue for both of you later. To pretend your use of cigarettes is safe, is just you playing with a loaded gun!
Women who drink and smoke while breastfeeding should have their children taken away from them. It is abusive to the child because they're putting their child's health and general well-being in danger. I quit for mine. It can be done. And if there's no actual law on the books, there should be.
I used to grow tobacco. Six weeks before harvest, you have to spray a chemical on the plants called MH-30. This chemical is systemic, it is absorbed into the plant and it stays there. It wouldn't work if it didn't. Its job is to stop the tobacco from putting out side shoots, called suckers after topping (breaking off the bloom). The suckers rob the plant of food and cause it to produce smaller, lighter leaves. So that MH-30 stays in the plant.
The MH-30 bottle had a big warning on it that you shouldn't even allow pregnant women in the patch after the plants were sprayed at any time up until harvest because it was so strongly mutagenic and it caused miscarriages.
That was the case when tobacco was mostly being raised in the US. But raising tobacoo was one of those jobs that was outsourced to third world countries since NAFTA. The price supports were removed in this country a few years ago, and almost none is still raised here. So what chemicals do you suppose they might be using on the tobacco now?
After the tobacco is sold to the cigarette companies, they add flame retardants and all sorts of other chemicals to the tobacco to make it burn more slowly. If you ever smoke a Canadian cigarette, you'll find that they burn in a matter of seconds, as the use of those flame retardants isn't allowed there.
When you smoke, all those chemicals not only enter your bloodstream, they also get all over your clothing. I read somewhere that it is more common for children of smokers to have asthma, even if they don't smoke in the house, because of the particulates clinging to the parent's clothing.
None of this means you shouldn't nurse your child. The particulates will still be clinging to your clothing if you bottle feed. It does mean that you should quit.
By the way, I also used to raise bottle calves. I had a cow and a goat that I used to raise two at a time, the rest were fed milk replacer from a bottle. The difference in health between the two groups was so dramatic that I swore I would never feed formula to a child of mine. My cow and goat raised calves were healthy, glossy, muscular and active. My formula raised calves all had the runs, they had dull coats, they were inactive and most of them got pneumonia.
I do smoke 2-3 hrs. before breastfeeding my 7mon old baby and have been since she was 1 mon. old. I only smoke maybe 1-3 cigg. a day. Most people will be quick to tell you "that's bad"..blah, blah, blah; as if there's anyone on the planet who hasen't heard that ciggerettes are bad for you. What people need to do is get educated about it. Yes, it is best to quit all together; but for women who can't or choose not to quit, it's still better to breastfeed than bottle feed. According to the research that I've read, nicotine does get into breastmilk, and has a half-life of 95 min. (so would prob. take about 3 hrs. to be eliminated). Not everyone can be "perfect", in fact no one is, so those of you who are sitting there shaking your finger at us "smokers", consider this, breastfeeding in itself takes alot of sacrafices, if we "smokers" really didn't care about our babies would we even be attempting to breastfeed at all? We as women and mothers do what we can with what we've got. Maybe if society wouldn't be so critical & judgmental of moms, more babies would get the wonderful benefits of breastfeeding. But instead moms don't even try b/c they feel as if they just can't live up to all of these "standards". As with everything, I believe moderation is key, I wouldn't smoke more that a few cigg. a day and not right before or during breastfeeding.
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AVS426 Sep, 17 2006 at 05:40 PM
Namaste formerly future_health_educator Sep, 18 2006 at 03:09 PM
KinKStar Sep, 19 2006 at 01:57 AM
