ShareThisBy ANITA SRIKAMESWARAN
Among women who stopped smoking during pregnancy, those who weren't worried about controlling their weight were most motivated to stay quit after delivery.
According to a new study led by psychologist Michele Levine, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, pregnant ex-smokers who weren't as confident about their ability to manage their weight without cigarettes were less motivated to stay smoke-free.
But that "makes me feel hopeful because weight concerns are something we know how to address," Levine said. "It would be really exciting if we could have a treatment that targeted those weight concerns so as to keep people from resuming smoking."
For the study, which will be published next month in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, researchers interviewed 119 women who quit smoking when they found out they were pregnant. Before that, they smoked at least eight cigarettes daily.
During their third trimester, they were questioned about their motivation to remain smoke-free after the births of their babies. Two-thirds were highly motivated to stay quit.
After accounting for intention to breast-feed, partner smoking, nicotine dependence and other factors, the researchers found "the more motivated you are to stay quit, the more able you feel to control your weight without a cigarette," Levine explained.
Nine out of 10 study participants quit smoking without any assistance.
"Women will say it's easy to quit when they're pregnant because cigarettes taste different and they're so nauseated anyway," smoking is no longer pleasurable, the psychologist noted.
Other research indicates that 50 percent of women who quit during pregnancy will resume smoking within four months of delivery, and that up to 70 percent will have started again by the time their babies are 6 months old.
It's perplexing partly because conventional wisdom says people who are able to stay quit for a year are unlikely to relapse, and many pregnant women have stopped smoking for at least that long, said Dr. Deborah Moss, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. She was not a member of the study team.
"We understand so little about why women return to smoking after quitting," she said. "It's a really critical area."
Many moms-to-be stop smoking out of concern for the baby they're carrying. But health consequences aren't eliminated after birth, Moss emphasized. Babies exposed to secondhand smoke have higher rates of sudden-infant-death syndrome, hospitalization, pneumonia and wheezing episodes.
A common misconception is that smokers shouldn't breast-feed, she added.
Then the babies "get all the harms of the smoking and they don't get the benefits of breast-feeding," Moss said. "So we're trying to encourage mothers to breast-feed even if they smoke."
The Pitt researchers followed the women for six months after they delivered their babies, and they will try to identify what leads some of them to resume smoking.
"If this study proves to be true, then I would predict weight concerns remain a factor," Levine said. "But I also think there's lots of other pressures."
Many of the participants were first-time moms, single and hadn't planned to get pregnant, she noted.
The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
