We have commented several times that smoking during pregnancy can have consequences on the health of the baby such as low weight, cognitive deficit, cleft lip and greater chances of suffering from Down syndrome.
A new study too blames exposure to snuff in the womb the alteration of sleep patterns of premature babies and consequences on his brain development.
According to the Academy of Sleep Medicine, babies born before the end of smoking mothers have more movements during sleep, have a more fragmented and disturbed sleep, and are at greater risk of suffering attention deficits during childhood.
They studied 40 healthy premature babies and divided them into three groups according to the amount of cigarettes their mothers had smoked during pregnancy: nothing, less than 10 and more than 10 a day.
Babies of mothers who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day slept almost two hours less than babies whose mothers did not smoke and showed disturbances in the quality and continuity of sleep, problems that remained even when the mother had not smoked for 30 days.
As an interesting fact, they also noticed that the babies of the most smoking mothers had a weight 21% lower than the babies whose mothers did not smoke. And let's not forget that exposure to tobacco during pregnancy is also related to sudden infant death syndrome.
Rest is key to the baby's good brain development. Poor quality of sleep can lead to short-term consequences in newborns such as alterations in some respiratory and cardiovascular functions, as well as neurocognitive disorders such as attention deficit in childhood and greater impulsiveness in adolescence.
