While smoking tobacco has long been linked to poor growth in a fetus and other short-term effects, more recent studies have looked at the long-term effects that tobacco has on a baby whose mother smoked during the pregnancy. According to Merck Manuals, about 20 percent of female smokers who become pregnant quit the habit. With all of the health effects that tobacco can have on both baby and mother, pregnant women who smoke are advised to try and quit for their own health and the health of their child.
Learning Disabilities
Children born to mothers who smoke tobacco tend to be more impulsive and have more trouble learning and developing. Dr. Sears explains that infants whose mothers smoked while they were in the womb are more likely to exhibit lower scores on mental tests at age one and to have lower grades overall during the school years than children whose mothers avoided tobacco. The risk of a learning disability, such as dyslexia, rises 25 percent in kids whose mothers smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day. Babies born to smokers may also have lifelong birth defects that hamper mental development, such as cerebral palsy or mental retardation, according to the March of Dimes.
Diabetes and Obesity
According to Pulmonary Reviews, after looking at lifelong data of individuals born in 1958, those whose mothers smoked moderately or heavily during pregnancy were over four times as likely to develop type 2 diabetes, also called adult onset diabetes, before the age of 33, which is considered an early age for developing this type of diabetes.
The children of mothers who smoke are also more likely to become obese later in life. Along with the higher propensity for diabetes, this indicates a possible malfunction in the insulin and food use metabolic pathways that develops in the fetus when exposed to maternal tobacco intake. One possible reason for this, according to Pulmonary Reviews, is that growth restriction in the fetus caused by tobacco use may prevent the proper development of these systems.
Cardiovascular Disease
A 2006 review of epidemiological data in the journal Tobacco Induced Diseases described a link between fetal exposure to tobacco smoke and future risk of cardiovascular disease. In particular, children who were exposed to tobacco smoke as a fetus are more likely to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure, than the offspring of women who did not smoke during pregnancy. This increase was originally thought to be correlated to the low birthweight typical of babies whose moms smoked during pregnancy, but two further studies found that even when compared with children of similar birth weight, the smokers' children had higher blood pressure at ages five and six than other kids.
Behavioral Effects
Mothers who smoke tobacco while pregnant may also affect their baby's brain in ways that last a lifetime. These children are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and to abuse drugs than the children of women who did not smoke while pregnant. According to Pulmonary Reviews, these linkages between criminal behavior or substance abuse and maternal smoking exist even when the data is corrected for other factors such as socioeconomic status.
