Hi Satya,

I don't think that it is helpful telling a pregnant woman who does smoke that she COULD have a stillborn child - I think it is quite cruel actually...this just brings about feelings of shame, guilt and helplessness. Smoking is an addiction like any other.

I smoked during my first pregnancy and continued throughout breast feeding, my partner managed to give up after our first bub was born, however he was a "chipper" and found it quite easy to cut it out.

I smoked throughtout my second pregnancy and managed to give it up a week before his birth, I took it back up when he weaned at ten months of age.

with my third pregnancy I gave up when I was 8 months pregnant and took it back up when he was 12 months old after he weaned. My due date was yesterday and I have failed miserably to give up on the numerous quit dates I have set this time round.

I don't tell people that I am a smoker (although they can smell that I am, no doubt) I don't smoke in public because of the shame (if I do I hide). Smoking is an addictive nasty habit - I am ashamed of it and wish that at the age of 13 I had never picked one up - but I did.

Saying this I don't understand why smokers take all the blame for this horrible addiction and the government takes none - smokers are victimized and treated like social lepers, however the government still permits the selling of tobacco, smoking is still marketed to our children in box office movies and tobacco companies have now moved their sights to promoting this habit in developing countries.

It easy for those that are not addicted to cigarettes to lecture, demonize or to pass judgement on what type of person you are - I couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like to be addicted to alcohol therefore it is easy for me to say stop drinking or to tell an pregnant woman who is an alcoholic that she is damaging her unborn child and that her baby will more than likely be mentally retarded.

Giving up cigarettes is an absolute struggle for me - I became addicted at an early age - I am not intentionally trying to damage my baby, I did not think at 13 "hey I musn't smoke because I want to have babies in the future and smoking endangers the life of an unborn child"

I hope that I can give this habit up once and for all...preferable while I am still alive to do it. My father was a smoker, gave up in his forties, however had a stroke in his fifties. When I visited him at the hospital before his operation to unblock his corotids, he was in a ward with a lot other smokers or obese older men who had lost limbs or had had their chests cracked open, it was a sad sight, however if you looked directly out the hospital window below there were the doctors, nurses and other hospital workers puffing on there cigarettes - perhaps a non smoker can see how ridiculous that truly is, however it does illustrate how horribly addictive it really is.