Quit smoking to give your baby a chance of a healthy life

Hannah O’Sullivan, Specialist Public Health Midwife at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, talks about how local maternity services are supporting families who are expecting a baby to quit smoking.

Smoking in pregnancy can cause a range of issues and complications in pregnancy, but our maternity services teams here in Torbay and South Devon offer lots of support to help treat tobacco dependency.

Protecting your baby from tobacco smoke is one of the best things families can do. Smoking in pregnancy increases the chances of premature birth, low birth weight and poor growth as well as miscarriage, stillbirth and sudden infant death syndrome (SID).

In 2022, we launched a new treating tobacco dependency service as part of our maternity support. Dedicated smoke-free pregnancy support workers are on hand to provide advice and support to help people quit smoking.

Before the service was launched, the number of people who smoked at the time of delivery was 11%. This has since reduced to 8%, in line with the national average and challenging the previous notion that those still smoking when they first met their midwife are unlikely to quit.

As a service we have recently signed up the government’s ‘Swap to Stop’ campaign and are providing vapes to women free of charge. As there is no carbon monoxide, vaping is considerably safer for pregnant women; research tells us that a vape is the most successful method of nicotine replacement for quitting smoking in pregnancy.

We can provide vapes and liquids, alongside other nicotine replacement options and kind, non-judgemental behavioural support.

Those who quit smoking tobacco by 15 weeks of pregnancy reduce this risk to that of non-smokers. This is an incredible opportunity for mothers to not only improve their own health, but to really make a huge positive life-long change to the health of their baby.

We have supported 27 women to quit smoking from January to March this year alone.  If both parents smoke, we can support them as a couple, as we know that one of the biggest barriers to quitting is another smoker in the home.

We have run coffee mornings at Gaia Coffee, a CIC in Paignton, where we provided advice, support and invited other healthcare professionals from maternity to talk about things like safe sleep and infant feeding.

It has been heartwarming to hear from the families that we have helped support. Some recent feedback from families has been very positive:

“I just wanted to say thanks so much for everything. Your support has been massively helpful.  You’re so lovely and easy to speak to, I always felt I could come back to you without judgement if I failed or hadn’t quit.”

“I couldn’t have done this smokefree journey without your support. I am almost 8 months smokefree and have never felt better. I was never judged from the beginning and you’ve been amazing checking in and always at the end of the phone. Thank you so much, I will always advocate for this service and really recommend it to others.” 

This year for National No Smoking Day we ran a prize draw for those who set a quit date in March and achieved a ‘4-week quit’. Local businesses donated prizes and we had a stall in the main maternity unit entrance to encourage visitors to sign up and make a quit attempt.

For the 75th anniversary of the NHS last year, we were incredibly proud to represent Devon as we were invited for a special event at 10 Downing Street. It was fantastic to be recognised for our work and raise awareness of such an important issue.

If you want to take your first steps towards a smoke-free pregnancy, please contact us for some non-judgemental advice and information on tsdft.smokefreepregnancy@nhs.net