We had to turn away a situation for the same exact reason just a month ago. It was the hardest thing to do but there are just too many risks involved. That doesn’t mean every child will have problems from it but there is the possibility. Good luck in whatever you decide.

We’ve also had a similar situation twice, both birthmothers ended up changing their minds about adoption, but it was a huge concern of ours as well. The internet doesn’t seem to help, since you just don’t know what sites you can trust. Our plan was to talk with the birthmother’s doctor as well as our own. Also, our attorney that we’re working with told us that about 60% of the birthmothers that come to him smoke, so we decided it was a good idea to talk with as many health professionals as we could, since it’s likely the next potential birthmother we talk to smokes. So far, we have found that there are a lot of risks, even though some babies come out healthy. There is still a lot of unknown as to how babies are effected in the long term. Good luck.

From what we’ve read, smoking can lead to premature birth and low birth weight babies - and the risks those entail. The agency we are working with said that most of their birthmothers smoke, so we needed to be ok with a birthmother that smoked to work with them. My husband’s mother smoked while carrying him, and we have not seen any adverse effects (not to say that everyone is that lucky).

Check out the March of Dimes website for more information. They are a reliable source with the goal of reducing premature births.

As far as I know the babies can have respitory problems and be born early with a lower birth weight. My son has asthma and needs medication and sometimes needs breathing treatments. I can not imagine life without him. He is now 11 years old. Just pray for direction and peace. This baby needs someone to love it maybe it is supposed to be you, maybe another family.

Our birthmom smoked during both her pregnancies with our children (We adopted biological siblings).  Both were born full term and at healthy weights (8lbs. 4 ozs. and 9 lbs. 15 ozs.) and both are generally healthy overall (mild colds, etc.).  I tend to agree with the above statements that a large majority of birthmom’s smoke.  Then again, most birthmom’s will do things that I wouldn’t think of doing while pregnant.  There in lies the problem.  You either accept usage in some form or another or you don’t and you look for another situation.  In our case, it worked out very well.  Good luck.

Having taken SUCH good care of my body while trying to get pregnant (and I’ve never smoked), it took me a long time to come to terms with adopting a baby who would not have as good of prenatal care as I’d like.  Our daughter’s birthmother didn’t even see a Dr. until she was at 33 weeks.  Yet, our daughter is fine.  In talking with my best friend about cigarettes, she mentioned something similar to jenny c.  Thirty-some years ago, the surgeon general hadn’t issued warnings yet, and her mother smoked a lot during her pregnancy.  And as you’d guess, she’s never had any medical-related issues either.  So basically, last year I was asking the same questions you are, & I decided to lighten up.  I figure that if the worse case scenario of cigarettes is lover-than average birth weight & asthma, I can handle that.  Medicine has come a long way in helping premie babies, as well as managing asthma.  As a teacher, I see LOTS of stuff, and I’d take that ANY day over illegal drug use in utero!

Our birthmother also smoked throughout her pregnancy, and she had no prenatal care: Our daughter is perfectly healthy. She was born 3 weeks early, but weighed 7.4, and all her tests were good. You never know, but I would consider this a low risk situation. Good luck!

I know this is scary, but I would not put too much into it.  My mother smoked through 4 pregnancies in the 50’s and 60’s (as did most of her peers during the baby booming years).  We all came out great, smart, college and beyond, no significant health issues.  I have two daughters, and both of their birth mothers smoked.  My older daughter is a dean’s list freshman at a private college, skater, dancer, my younger is an incredible athlete, actor, singer and very healthy.  On the big scale of things, this is not as bad as some of the possible problems with birth mothers. 

On the other hand, there is little we can control when we are going through this, and if this is something you cannot deal with, you may always feel that the smoking is the reason for anything that goes wrong.  continue to do the research, and I recommend you talk to a pediatrician and get their input.  My younger daughter’s birth mother had no prenatal care, but our pediatrician recommended that as long as we had drug screening done (and she was not drinking), the baby tends to take what they need, and usually turn out OK.

I wish you all the best on this!

Make an informed decision.  I recommend visiting the
U of W Center for Adoption Medicine website; http://www.adoptmed.org.  There is a vast amount of comprehensive information for all types of prenatal exposures.  You can also go to Organization of Teratology Information Specialists; http://www.otispregnancy.org.  Every situation is different but get your facts from a reliable source.
You may also want to pass those sites onto the BM if you think she may benefit from the information.

We were fortunate when working through our adoption process that my sister is an OB/GYN who specializes in high risk pregnancies and deliveries. Since she was my sister, she didn’t have to worry about giving me the official information because she knew we wouldn’t sue her over it if something went wrong.

Our children’s birth mother (we adopted biological siblings) was also a heavy smoker. She smokes 2 packs or more per day. She also has two older children.

My sister said we should ask what was the birth weight of the older children when they were born. Both went to full term and were over 8 lbs at birth. My sister said that was an indication that the tobacco had little effect on the fetuses. Tobacco causes few issues in the majority of pregnancies. Second hand smoke after birth is far worse.

(Note: she also said not to be too worried about any known or unknown drug usage. The placenta is actually quite good at filtering out most of the street drugs. She said that we should worry about excessive alcohol use as that is what causes the most long term issues.)

When our son was born, there were no issues whatsoever. A year later when our daughter was born she did suffer from severe nicotine withdrawal. Her stay in the hospital was pretty bad. It took about 72 hours for the nicotine to get completely out of her system. Until it did, she would scream and scream and scream. She was obviously in pain. After a couple of hours she would fall into an exhausted sleep for 20-30 minutes and then wake up scream some more. Once the nicotine wore off it was obvious. She started sleeping more, was less jittery and calmed down a lot.

The hospital pediatrician said it was horrible, but there wasn’t anything they could give her to ease it. He further said it would work itself out and shouldn’t have any long term effects. He was right. And she is now a perfectly happy & healthy 3 month old baby.

As our children get older, we will ned to watch for issues with asthma. However, because we live in an area with virtually no pollution or smog (Switzerland), the risk is low. It would be much higher if we live in a large city with high levels of air pollution at any time before their lungs stop developing at around 12 years old. But that would be true of any child, regardless of nicotine exposure during pregnancy.

The other thing we will have to be aware of is that because both of our children were born with some level of nicotine addiction (especially our daughter), if they were to begin smoking at any stage later in life they would become addicted much faster than children not born with a nicotine addiction.

Is the smoking during pregnancy a risk? Definitely. Did we consider it enough of a risk that we said no? Nope. And if we had said no, we wouldn’t have our two beautiful children.

Any match is a risk. If you wait for the Perfect Match, you will wait forever.

Good luck with your decision!

Gretchen