I bought a pack of Camel Lights with the coupon my friend gave me at the same time that I bought the pregnancy test that told me that I was pregnant with my son. I smoked my last cigarette on my way to the undergraduate library, where I peed on a stick in the public bathroom. A couple minutes later, I read the strip that took a second of denial to decipher. Then I threw my pack away with the test that read “positive” and walked to work, my first non-smoker walk in a long time. It was a very lonely walk.
Rarely do you hear about people picking up smoking in their mid-twenties. I had been a preachy non-smoker ever since I learned about cigarettes. I had never, ever been able to understand why people would voluntarily inhale cancer. Stop while you’re ahead. That sort of addiction was foreign to me. I had friends who smoked, but I refused to date smokers.
Then I fell in love with a smoker. I never smoked while we were together. After that relationship, in a self-destructive way, I inhaled my first cigarette (an American Spirit blue — very super intense) and loved it. I loved smoking. I loved coffee and cigarettes, I loved beer and cigarettes. I loved getting to sit on the smoker’s bench. There was this whole smoker’s culture that I embraced. The social aspect was so interesting — sitting at a cafe, having people ask for lights or to bum smokes, it just sparked this whole new range of conversation that was amazing to me. I loved the ritual of rolling my own cigarettes by hand. I could write an entire article about how much I not only loved smoking, but everything that came along with it, including the stench.
Then… I got pregnant. I had to cut it out of my life. I had never attempted to really quit before — I had managed to cut back to a cigarette a day, but I never wanted to quit.
To support me, my boyfriend quit when I did. It was way harder than he’d expected. He caved in a couple of times. He would do push-ups when the cravings would come back.
After my pregnancy, he continued on as a non-smoker. He does not want our son to associate him with smoking. It’s not just about not smoking around our son, but even anything else that has to do with it, like a smoke break, or even smelling like cigarette smoke. He also thinks about what a gross and nasty habit it is, and how much harder it makes any physical activity. Once, after being tempted post-second drink, he looked at a picture of our son on his cell phone to get him past his craving.
I asked him if he considers himself a non-smoker or if he is just on pause for right now — waiting for the right time to start up again. He told me his mentality is that he’s really quit.
I’ve had cravings to smoke many times, but I never do. Mainly, I know that it would be horrible for my son because I am breastfeeding.
My problem is that the cravings are getting stronger now. I talked to my partner about it and he asked me about when I start craving cigarettes. Lately, it’s been when I’ve been feeling particularly stressed, anxious, nervous or lonely. It gets unbearable sometimes.
When I say it gets unbearable, I feel like only a handful of people may know what I mean. My partner flies away for four days out of the week because he has to commute out of state for work. I am stuck in a town I mostly hate — without any close friends left. They’ve all moved to NYC, which is a shattered dream for me. The rest of my friends are either very single or very young, or both — meaning I’m hard to hang out with because I have a kid and I can’t really go anywhere that easily.
My partner suggested that I get through these difficult times by doing another activity that will relax me the same way smoking a cigarette will, and that activity for me is writing and has always been writing. It’s actually a brilliant idea. I thought I could either write here or write letters to long lost friends.
The advice given to mothers who are having trouble quitting smoking is that a mother should keep breastfeeding instead of opting for formula. According to kellymom.com, breastmilk will provide immunities to the effects of secondhand smoke on babies. They become more susceptible to infections and diseases. If a mother decides to continue smoking during pregnancy, she should cut down — 20 cigarettes a day can increase risks. Do not smoke before or during breastfeeding, instead smoke right after to decrease the amount of nicotine that will pass onto baby. It takes 95 minutes for half of the nicotine to get out of your system.
Dr. Lisa Amir, in a review published in 2001, concluded that “Although there is consistent evidence that women who smoke breastfeed their infants for a shorter duration than non-smokers, the evidence for a physiological mechanism is not strong.” That means babies of smokers who are weaned faster than babies of non-smoking moms aren’t necessarily weaned faster because of the smoking — it could just be problems with “poor lactation management” prevailent in smoking mothers. That’s actually a study I would like to read about.
The best bet is to just quit. I actually kind of hate myself for reading that website because now it is even more of a temptation for me. I have to use this whole new mentality for not smoking. It’s definitely easy for non-smokers to preach about how nasty cigarettes are and to use bully methods of communication, which I feel are the least effective. I’m obviously still an addict. I haven’t even quit for myself. I quit for my son.
