The number of smoking women is growing. What can the doctor say? Tobacco contains nicotine which is a poison for the body because it effects negatively on the heart and blood vessels. The small number of nicotine affects only at the firs inhale and then the body gets used to the poison and gets more amount of nicotine. But at certain concentration the nicotinism may occur. Smoking also brings other harm. If instead of fresh air to inhale the smoke into the lungs, the pulmonary vesicles (alveoli) will contain more smoke than air. Smoke contains carbon dioxide, which in connection with the coloring matter of red blood cells will give Carboxyhemoglobin. The latter is somewhat different from oxygenated hemoglobin, which brings needed for life oxygen into the body! The body gets rid of it hardly and that is the cause of its malnutrition.
During breast-feeding smoking can cause insufficient milk supply and reduction of the immunity of the child. In addition, the smoke is unpleasant for child, he/she turns away from his/her mother, and milk, soaked in smoke, he/she does not like. As a result, the child is premature separated from the breast, thereby causing great harm to his/her health. Each conscious woman should stop smoking as soon as her pregnancy will be established, and not to smoke until the end of lactation. We certainly do not smoke where there is a child, even if we have stopped breast-feeding. A child should not inhale the tobacco smoke or be in smoky room where his/her lungs fill with not fresh which is necessary for its development, but combustion products of tobacco. A child of smoking parents is usually weak, nervous, often sick, poorly tolerates to various diseases, and sometimes skin and eyes are affected, in severe cases, there are deviations from mental development. Therefore, a breast-feeding mother must not smoke.