Give your baby a head start

It's never too late. Your baby's health chances improve the day you stop. each week without cigarettes is a better week for your baby.

How to kick the habit

Pregnancy is one of the best chances you will ever have to give up smoking. Almost half of the women who stop whilst pregnant, stay stopped.

Follow this stop-smoking plan.

1. Set a date to stop

Choose a day when you are likely to be relaxed. get rid of all your cigarettes, ashtrysa and lighters the night before.

2. Think about why you smoke

Here are some possibilities:

• it helps me relax

• I'm afraid I'll put on weight

• Knowing why you smoke will help you to think of different things to do instead of lighting up.

Cigarettes don't calm your nerves, they just calm the craving for nicotine, which they also create.

If cigarettes dampen your appetite, you have a good reason to stop. You need to eat well during pregnancy. By the time the baby is born you will be a non-smoker.

3. Break the links which create the habit

If tea or coffee and cigarettes always go together, try drinking something different

Avoid smoky places: ask friends to meet you at home and make it a smoke free zone.

If being indoors, working or watching TV makes you want to smoke, try changing your routines. In time the urge will fade and you can return to your old routines.

4. Get support

Tell everyone around you what you're doing and why. Ask them not to offer you cigarettes. Your partner can help by giving up too, or at least not smoking near you.

5. Take one day at a time

Forever seems a very long time, so don't think about it. Just stick with being a non-smoker today.

6. Learn to relax

Relaxation techniques are often taught in ante-natal classes, or you could borrow a relaxation tape from the library.

7. Cope with craving

Nicotine in cigarettes is addictive - your body will have to get used to managing without. You may be lucky and notice little change, but you may also feel irritated and light headed, find it hard to concentrate or sleep. But these feelings are only temporary.

8. Reward yourself

Save your cigarette money and use it to buy yourself a gift at the end of the first week.

You've earned it! You might choose to save up the money, perhaps using a chart on the wall to remind you. In a year's time you'll have saved for a well earned family holiday.

And the good news doesn't end there. As a non-smoking parent you cut down the risk to your children of:

• cot death

• glue ear - which causes partial deafness (the risk is cut by one third)

• chest infections (the risk is halved)

• asthma attacks (also half the risk)

• and your children are less likely to be smokers when they grow up.

In fact, if every parent who smoked stopped today, we would reduce the number of under-fives in hospital by something like 17,000 a year!

Not just mothers

Anyone who smokes regularly in the same room as a pregnant woman, or a baby, is putting that baby's health at risk.

You have the right to clean air for your baby.

• At work, ask colleagues not to smoke in the office. Your employer should support your right to a healthy office environment.

• At home, don't supply ashtrays and ask friends to step outside for their cigarettes.

• If you or your partner find it impossible to stop, then keep your baby in a smoke free part of the home.

And remember....

• Once you've stopped, don't be tempted to try even just one - it will be the start of becoming a smoker again.

• Cutting down does not work: stopping completely is the only way.

Getting help

Contact Quitline on 0800 00 22 00 for friendly support and encouragement, and to talk through practical ways to quit.

If you want information, ask Quitline to send you a free Quitpack.

Your midwife, health visitor, practice nurse and GP can also offer help and advice on giving up smoking.

This information has been provided by Health Promotion England