When one of my close friends first got pregnant, her whole lifestyle changed. She was very picky on what she ate, what she drank, just what she put into her body in general. I thought she was just being too picky. Things have changed and this is the first of a three part blog post I will be doing this week.
This is a response to an article posted on Yahoo! News, More Newborns Suffering Drug Withdrawal at Birth. A study was done with data from a 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The common outcome for the babies was drug withdrawal symptoms after they were born. These symptoms includes such things as "irritability, shrill crying, vomiting, diarrhea, hyperactivity poor sucking, tremors, seizures, restlessness, sleep issues, hypothermia and breathing brothers."
The interesting thing about all this is that not many people consider that their baby is getting whatever their mother puts into her body. All of the nutrition the baby is from the umbilical cord which absorbs everything the mother is exposed to. Not only is this the food, drinks, and drugs but also the air the baby breaths.
While doing the research for this blog I found a very useful page SafeFetus.com . The page allows you to look up a drug and then it will let you know more about how it affects the mother and baby.
Another article on BabyZone lists the affects of different recreational drugs on the mother and child. An interesting statement in their article was that it's not just what drug you are taking but also what trimester you are in during your pregnancy. One example is Amphetamines which includes Meth and Ecstasy, these can not only affect the baby's weight but also could lead to an increase in premature labor, miscarriage and placental abruption.
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