Quit Smoking for the Sake of Your Kids

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Quit Smoking for the Sake of Your Kids

Quit Smoking For the Sake of Your Kids

The most likely candidates to become addicted to smoking are those who begin smoking in their teen years. If you started smoking as a teenager and have been smoking for many years, it may be difficult to quit when you become pregnant. But quitting before, during, or after pregnancy (and preferably all three) offer significant health benefits to both you and your kids.

If you’re pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, use this as motivation to quit smoking once and for all. If you already have children, it’s not too late to quit smoking and improve the quality of life for your entire family!

Even before pregnancy, smoking can affect your fertility. Female smokers have a more difficult time conceiving. Smokers have been shown to have a more than 3 times greater chance than nonsmokers for taking in excess of a year to become pregnant. More recent studies demonstrate that smoking in women may impair the fertilization and implantation of the embryo. It is also suspected that tobacco chemicals could change the cervical fluid to cause it to become toxic to sperm, which will of course increase the difficulty of conceiving.

Likewise, male smokers are 50 percent more susceptible to becoming impotent - either temporarily whilever they smoke, or permanently.

If smokers do manage to become pregnant, the concerns associated with smoking are far from over. If a pregnant woman continues to smoke, tobacco chemicals are passed to the fetus through the blood stream. Smoking during pregnancy is also associated with low birth weight, placenta previa and preterm delivery, premature rupture of membranes, miscarriage, and neonatal death.

After a successful delivery, the effect of a smoking parent on the baby’s health continues - with the additional danger of a father who smokes, as well. Newborns have the same amount of nicotine levels in their bloodstream as their mothers, and suffer withdrawal in the first few days after birth. In its first year of life, a baby with one or both parents who smoke will be more at risk to contract pneumonia and bronchitis and frequent, often severe, asthma attacks.

Throughout life, if parents continue to smoke, these children will be exposed to secondhand smoke, also known as passive smoking. Because of their increased breathing rate, children inhale more air and pollutants relative to their body weight than adults do. They therefore continue to suffer from respiratory illnesses at greater rates even than the primary smoker or smokers in the household.

The effects of secondhand smoking include increased susceptibility to colds, respiratory problems including asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia, ear aches, and other sicknesses requiring a doctor’s visit.

Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Children with allergies or asthma can have their symptoms worsen when exposed to secondhand smoke.

Finally, children of smokers are also more likely to eventually become regular smokers themselves.

As a concerned parent, you’re considering quitting smoking. But what exactly are the benefits, and how long do they take to appear? The first benefit - blood pressure and pulse returning to normal - happens only 20 minutes after you finish your last cigarette. Of course, continual smoking raises your blood pressure every time you light up.

In the first three days after quitting, all carbon dioxide and nicotine is eliminated from a smoker’s body. The lungs begin clearing out mucous and smoking-related pollutants. Your sense of taste and smell will improve markedly, and breathing eases as the bronchial tubes relax. In a mere 72 hours, your energy level will also increase.

Within four months after quitting, a smoker’s circulation will improve. Three to nine months later, lung functions increase up to 10%, which means coughing, wheezing, and breathing problems improve greatly.

Five years post-quitting, the risk of a heart attack falls to of half of that of a smoker’s risk. After ten years as an ex-smoker, your risk of lung cancer is also just half that of a smoker, and by ten years, your heart attack risk has reduced even more, and is now equal to that of a complete nonsmoker.

These overall improvements in physical fitness can help you become a better parent. You will have more energy to devote to your children, as well as a decreased risk of heart attacks and cancer. Similarly, your children will become healthier and learn about a fit, active lifestyle that they can hopefully maintain throughout their own lives.

No matter how long you’ve been smoking for, quitting when you become a parent can help improve your health and that of your children. It has almost immediate physical benefits as well as long-term mental benefits, such as encouraging your children by example not to smoke. Use parenthood as a reason to quit smoking, and enjoy your increased health and fitness into many years of parenthood and grandparenthood! If you don't stop smoking now, you may never see your grandchildren grow up. If you're unluckly, you may not even see your children grow up.

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