Mothers-to-be smoking for smaller babies

Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies.

The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg).

However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.

He said: ?We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby.

?Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.?

This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.

Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy ?affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta?.

It was also ?reasonable to assume? that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568409/s/1680adc3/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Chealth0Chealthnews0C86232670CMothers0Eto0Ebe0Esmoking0Efor0Esmaller0Ebabies0Bhtml/story01.htm

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