Look, there’s no need to go into all of the health risks of smoking. You know about lung cancer, emphysema and more. There’s also no need to talk about how dangerous it is to smoke while you’re pregnant. You know darn well that smoking during pregnancy is one of the most common causes of birth defects. You may be planning on quitting, just as soon as you find out you’re pregnant.

To be sure, that’s a good thing. Smoking is one of the worst things you can do while pregnant. Still, if you don’t quit smoking now, you may find that you can’t get pregnant at all. Smoking can interfere with your ability to conceive.

Here are some ways that smoking can kill your dreams of having a baby:

The chemicals in tobacco smoke actually have the ability to change your hormones, leading to an imbalance that can confuse the body and interfere with its ability to conceive.

The chemicals in tobacco smoke can also damage paternal chromosomes. This can not only lead to genetic abnormalities and birth defects, but it can lead to an early miscarriage in which you didn’t even know that you were pregnant.

Smoking can cause vascular effects, which have been linked in scientific research to impotence.

Secondary damage from smoking, such as a metabolic disorder or vascular disease, diabetes or thyroid problems can all interfere with pregnancy and cause an early miscarriage.

Smoking has even been linked to problems with your cervical mucus. It can actually reduce the quality of your cervical mucus.

If you’re trying to get pregnant, smoking just isn’t worth the risk. In some cases, by the time that you discover you’re pregnant, the damage from smoking is already done and irreversible. Don’t play games with your hopes of parenthood. If you smoke, quit, and don’t start trying to conceive until you’ve successfully quit smoking.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 and is filed under Fertility.