Pregnancy & Birth

The Effects of Smoking and Wine Consumption During pregnancy

Author by heena256
Reviewed By heena256
Last Edited : January 23, 2025

Many female celebrities enjoy the occasional sip of wine or smoke. If you are pregnant, everything you ingest will also affect your unborn child. So, it’s crucial to eliminate the smoking and drinking habits that might harm your kid. By the time you confirm pregnancy, your unborn child’s brain and other organs have already formed.

So, ensure to take action timely. If you are having a kid, you may lessen the danger to him by immediately abandoning these behaviors.

Alcohol consumption in the first trimester is especially dangerous, as this is when major organs are forming.
Smoking during pregnancy can damage the baby’s lungs, leading to chronic respiratory problems later in life.
Even a single binge drinking episode can significantly increase the risk of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Smoking can alter the DNA of a developing fetus, potentially increasing the risk of certain cancers.
Prenatal exposure to alcohol or nicotine may affect the child’s future learning and memory abilities.
Pregnant women exposed to vaping have reported higher levels of oxidative stress, potentially harming fetal health.

Medical Guidelines for Drinking Alcohol

Drinking Alcohol can be dangerous, precisely when you are pregnant or trying to conceive. Its intake interferes with fertility and results in a reduced ability to create. Its excessive intake might lead to miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy. When you consume alcohol, it poses long-term harm to the baby. The greater you consume, the more the risk of developing complications will be.

Thus, the safest approach is to avoid the use of alcohol during this condition to minimize the risk of any difficulty.

How does it happen?

The development of the fetus is affected by alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Just like when a pregnant woman consumes alcohol, it passes through the placenta and affects the baby’s development. It does not happen in the early few weeks of conception; instead, it occurs throughout the course.

When a woman drinks excessive alcohol, it comes up with increased chances of:

Premature baby birth
Low birth weight baby
Leads to a condition known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). This syndrome negatively affects the physical and mental development of the child.
Excessive alcohol consumption leads to multiple organ damage, which is highly dangerous for the kid.

So, different medical guidelines do not advise drinking alcohol at any stage of pregnancy. Its intake leads to huge chances of miscarriage, so it should be avoided altogether.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Children with the syndrome have severe growth abnormalities and cognitive and facial defects. Its symptoms vary from mild to moderate to extreme, and it appears as a significant consequence of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Signs of the children with this affected syndrome include:

Small size upon birth
Eating and sleeping difficulties
Cognitive decline
Loss of consciousness in school and daily chores
Inability to control behaviors

Children with this syndrome need special medical care. Education should be given to pregnant and lactating mothers about the inhibition of alcohol.

Breastfeeding and Alcohol Consumption

Trim levels of wine may be found in breast milk and passed to the infant. It changes the fragrance of milk, affecting kids’ regular feeding and digestion. When a child does not consume breast milk, he feels sleepy and sick the whole day.

So, try not to drink wine, preferably, but if you can’t, try to consume it for 2 to 3 hours before feeding your kid.

If you are pregnant or under lactation, try not to consume over 14 units of alcohol in a week. Divide the intake into three or more days because high intake in a single day triggers health risks and abnormalities.

What Should You Do to Stop Drinking?

It’s very tough to stop drinking when you are addicted to it. This way, you can take help from your obstetrician, gynecologist, or other obstetric care providers. You can tell them about your drinking habits and receive special care and counseling from their artistic approaches. It will help you quit easily and in a better way.

Smoking and Pregnancy

Smoking badly affects a woman’s health during pregnancy, lactation, and ordinary circumstances. About 17,000 children under five are hospitalized yearly because of passive smoke exposure. However, the risks to you and your unborn child can be reduced if you quit smoking.

Smoking avoidance appears difficult sometimes. Multiple guidelines suggest that if a woman is struggling to quit it, she should consult a professional for counseling. She should try to do smoking at least two or three hours after breastfeeding, not before it. It minimizes the baby’s exposure to nicotine. Anyway, the ultimate choice should be to quit it thoroughly to keep the good health of you and the developing kid.

How does it Affect?

This is a cigarette type that is powered by a battery. Though it has fewer harmful substances than actual cigarette smoke, it’s still not recommended. It contains nicotine and a fuel that is unsafe for the fetus. If a woman consumes vaping during pregnancy, it enhances the chances of damage to the baby’s brain and lungs. Smoking during conception appears disastrous for the baby in multiple ways. Such as;

It leads to premature birth
It causes miscarriage and cot death
It induces respiratory difficulties and wheezing in the first six months of the child’s development.
It causes fetal growth restriction, preterm labor, and abnormal placentation
Moderate smoking may lead to respiratory disorders like asthma and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

A medical journal reports that smoking leads to the development of babies with webbed fingers and toes. Some babies take birth with extra or missing fingers and toes. It also states that if a woman consumes around half a pack of cigarettes per day, she possibly gives rise to a baby with digit abnormalities by 29%.

The same study observed live births in the United States in 2001 and 2002 and recorded around 5171 infants with such defects.

So, quit both active and passive smoking. Encourage the surrounding people to do the same, as second hand smoke releases certain chemicals which can damage a person’s health. However, if you find it hard to quit, just get help from a non-smoker.

Keep in mind that the ultimate decision is always yours.

So, she should stay away from this type as well.

Effects of E-Cigarette

So, she should stay away from this type as well.

When should you skip it?

Ideally, a woman should stop smoking before pregnancy. But if she does not, she should try to have moderate intake. It’s much better than not stopping it at all. If you are still smoking after getting confirmation about the pregnancy, quit it immediately.

Takeaway

Healthy living practices and lifestyle modifications are always recommended for pregnant women. Taking extra precautions and care can trigger the chances of being a healthy mother. This way, you could give birth to a healthy baby.

So, quit the smoke and put down the glass of wine to ensure a healthy conception.