�Although many women resign smoking during pregnancy to protect their unborn children from the effects of cigarettes, half of them resume the habit within a few months of giving birth.
By shedding light on the factors that enable the other half to frame down that cigarette for good, a study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could lead to programs designed to help women quit and stay quit.
According to the study, women with a live-in partner who shared some of the effect of child-rearing were more likely to remain smoking free, while women wHO were single mothers or who lacked the social and financial resources to deal with being a new parent were more likely to relapse.
"In the future we can look at these and early factors in women world Health Organization quit smoke during gestation to assess who is at low or high risk of relapse," aforementioned Carol E. Ripley-Moffitt, MDiv, research associate in UNC's department of family music and the study's lede author. "We can so offer more intensive interventions for those at higher risk to address the physical, behavioural and social issues related to to relapse."
Smoking during pregnancy increases the risks of pregnancy complications, decreased birthing weight and SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), Ripley-Moffitt said. She noted that the past 15 eld have seen a steady decrease in the turn of women who smoking while pregnant, in part because of an overall decline in smoking rates among all women of childbearing age and in part because of interventions targeting women during the prenatal period.
"But more necessarily to be done because over 50 percent of women world Health Organization quit the habit during pregnancy are smoking again at vI months postnatal," Ripley-Moffitt said.
The UNC study, which appears in the August issue of the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, is the first-class honours degree to analyse not only the factors leading to relapse only also those leading to a smoke-free life afterwards pregnancy. Ripley-Moffitt and colleagues interviewed pregnant women attending prenatal clinics in primal North Carolina who had quit smoking before 30 weeks gestation. Of the 94 women enrolled in the study, 43 had remained smoke-free and 51 had relapsed when interviewed at 4 months postpartum.
Researchers asked all women around their decision to leave office during maternity, how they quit, and what they would do in the future.
Women world Health Organization had remained smoke-free were asked about the benefits they had experienced, how they would handle temptations to locoweed, how they had rewarded themselves for not smoking, and what support they might motive to remain smoke-free.
Women world Health Organization had relapsed were asked to depict specific situations that caused them to return to smoking, their feelings around smoking once again, perceptions about the dangers of used smoke, and what would need to be different in their lives in order to stop smoking again.
Several factors emerged to differentiate the two groups of women. Those world Health Organization remained smoke-free postpartum were bolstered by strong social support, inviolable internal impression systems, warm beliefs in postpartum wellness benefits of not smoking, negative experiences with a return to smoking and concrete strategies for dealings with temptations.
Women who relapsed postpartum were undermined by easy access to cigarettes, reliance on cigarettes to deal with stress, want of financial resources, want of resources for childrearing and low self-esteem.
The findings may enable researchers and clinicians to distinguish between pregnant women who will ultimately retrogress from those that rest smoke relieve postpartum, Ripley-Moffitt said. The findings as well suggest that any new programs aimed at improving quit rates must be comprehensive in nature - they must give women the tools to larn new skills, deal with addiction and improve life circumstances, socially and financially.
"Many of the women wHO relapsed were already trying to throw in the towel again when we interviewed them," Ripley-Moffitt said. "While there is no simple solution, we recommend now addressing the social and financial stresses that booster cable to get worse. We hope that our study testament encourage originative interventions to help mothers sustain a smoke-free modus vivendi after maternity, improving overall health for women and their families."
This research was supported by a grant from the Smoke-Free Families Program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. UNC Study co-authors include Dr. Adam O. Goldstein, prof of fellowship medicine and Dr. Jacob A. Lohr, professor of pediatrics. Lohr is too affiliated with the Governor's Institute on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, which collaborated on the study.
Source: Stephanie Crayton
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
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Saturday 6 September 2008
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