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While there is nothing more beautiful in the world than giving birth to a newborn, there is surely no worse situation than giving birth to a baby with health problems, or even malformations. Nowadays, we can detect many genetic diseases in advance, and thus know in advance if our fetus is in perfect health for its next arrival into the world.
All the luck is therefore on the mother's side to ensure that her baby is born in good conditions and has an exemplary immune system. Unless she neglects her own lifestyle: By not stopping smoking as soon as she announces her pregnancy, by allowing herself one or more glasses of alcohol from time to time, or by taking any drug to let her mind wander. Because then real dangers arise for the infant's health!
Drugs, alcohol and tobacco should be avoided during pregnancy.
It is no secret that psychotropic and/or addictive products such as tobacco, alcohol and all kinds of drugs, whether natural or chemical, are real dangers to the health of the human body.They give us the impression of calming us down, while they only excite us more, while sowing panic in our brain cells, disrupting our organism, and slowly destroying a whole series of our vital organs.
Whether we consume it occasionally or regularly is up to us, since we are the ones who decide how we manage our lives. But when we know that everything a pregnant woman swallows, ingests, inhales or injects during her pregnancy ends up almost as much in the body of her fetus as in her own, then we can speak of maternal neglect, or even a state of total unconsciousness, when one of them gives in to her addictions.
Because a pregnant woman, even from the first weeks, not only ruins her own health, but also radically endangers that of her baby, as the consequences of her actions can be more than harmful to him...
The dangers of tobacco for the unborn baby
Tobacco is a real poison for our lungs, and can damage our arteries and therefore our blood circulation, while causing strokes and other cancers.
But besides poisoning our bodies, we should already know that it is a factor in infertility. That is to say, a couple of smokers will have half the chance of the woman getting pregnant within the desired period. Also, once done after a more or less long time, continuing to smoke during pregnancy carries risks for both the mother and her baby. Thus, tobacco is a vector of numerous complications on the health of the fetus, such as:
- Miscarriage, where the mother loses her embryo during the first trimester of her pregnancy
- Ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo implants abnormally in its mother's breast
- Premature birth, often a trigger for physical or mental malformations
- Low-lying placenta, where the placental layer does not cover the internal os
- Retroplacental hematoma, where the placenta detaches prematurely
- An abnormality in the development of the fetus, where the fetus experiences delayed growth due to the passage of carbon monoxide into its own blood. Due to a lack of oxygen, future complications can be severe, the first of which is the fetus's underweight and size, which is deemed too small.
It's also worth noting that smoking alters a mother's milk, reducing its production. And later on, the child of a smoking mother can be prone to multiple respiratory infections. Finally, tobacco inhaled by a mother is the most common cause of sudden infant death syndrome.
The dangers of alcohol on the unborn fetus
Today there is a World Awareness Day for what is called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, to highlight how the consumption of any type of alcohol during pregnancy can pose serious risks to the health of the baby. In fact, it is the leading cause of non-genetic mental handicap in newborns, and it is also the leading factor in social maladjustment in children observed in Europe.
But the toxic effects of alcohol consumed by the mother during pregnancy do not stop there, since many other very serious symptoms can occur before or after childbirth, such as:
- Growth retardation, with risk of premature birth
- Physical malformations of non-genetic origin
- Central nervous system dysfunction
It is not yet known how much alcohol intake can cause these complications, which is why all health professionals recommend "zero alcohol during pregnancy", which can only do the mother good anyway.
The dangers of drugs on the baby's brain
While drug use is harmful in itself, various surveys and studies conducted on the subject show that it is often accompanied by other equally toxic products such as tobacco, alcohol or anti-anxiety medications. Which makes for a real melting pot of different poisons ingested almost at the same time!
It is therefore easy to understand that a pregnant woman who uses drugs, such as cannabis, cocaine or heroin, could put the life of her child at risk, as well as her own. This is because the drug molecules cross the placental sac and enter the fetus's bloodstream. This has the consequence, among other serious things, of making the latter addicted to the toxic product in question from birth! Something inconceivable for everyone, and which should therefore not exist, but which unfortunately happens more often than one can imagine...
In addition to the same disastrous consequences seen above with alcohol and tobacco consumption, other symptoms that can be brought on in the child if the mother had consumed drugs during her pregnancy are:
- Neonatal tremors, which are tremors noticeable just after delivery
- Behavioral problems observed in the baby's first year
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in childhood and adolescence
- Ability to cope with stress and depression
- Strong taste for opiate substances in later life
For all these unhappy reasons, a mother should take advantage of her "pregnancy" to put an end to her addictions, at least if she could without too many constraints, but with a little effort and willpower, because as we have just seen, it is truly worth it!
