Not too late for pregnant smokers to butt out
Posted: 07 July 2011 STOCKHOLM: Women who quit smoking once they find out they are pregnant can give birth to a baby weighing the same as a child born to a non-smoker, a British expert told a European fertility meeting Wednesday. "Once you find you're pregnant, its not too late to do something about your smoking," Nick Macklon, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Southampton , told AFP . "If you stop smoking, you can have a baby with the same birth weight as if you'd never smoked," he explained, adding birth weight was an important predictor of long-term health. But "if you find you're pregnant and you continue smoking, that will have a major effect on the birth weight of your child," he warned. Macklon's findings, presented at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm , are based on a study of more than 50,000 pregnant women in Southampt...