I have a confession to make: I am an ex-smoker. I quit five years ago this month and it still ranks as one of the hardest things I've ever accomplished.
I quit because we were trying to have a baby. Nine months later, I finally got successfully knocked up (apparently I had to give birth to myself as a nonsmoker first). And craved cigarettes like I hadn’t since the initial Trainspotting-like detox from smoking – so thank goodness I didn’t have to count on pregnancy to get me to quit.
And if I had (shockingly, less than half of pregnant women do quit), chances are good it would not have stuck. Fully half of all pregnant women who quit during pregnancy go back to it within six months. Some health agencies are trying new approaches to help pregnant women quit, like offering gift cards for X amount of time smoke free.
Women with postpartum depression are much more likely to go back to smoking, and experts point to stress as the cause in other cases. Add in the (mistaken) belief that cigarettes will help you shed the baby weight, and the exhaustion that comes from having a little baby around, and you pretty much have a recipe for relapse. I know since my son arrived five months ago, I have been tempted briefly to smoke and before he was born there were whole weeks at time I never even thought about cigarettes.
For smokers, that smoke break is a little time to yourself, a calming force, and a stimulant all at once. So it makes sense that new motherhood, when all those things are desperately needed, triggers the smoking urge. If you're a new mom and new ex-smoker struggling with the urge, find support (most states have smoking cessation hotlines, and QuitNet helped me enormously) and remind yourself staying off the smokes is easy in comparison to pretty much any common parenting challenge.
