One cannot imagine the horror of having your child die before you, unless it's happened to you. But when all is said and done, smoking around children is STUPID. People who do it are actually either uninformed, or imbeciles (and yes it includes my mother and yes I do get on with her). Smoking around babies increases the risk of cot death immensely. This includes breathing on a baby for up to half an hour after the last cigarette, picking up a baby when you have smokey clothes or when you have smoked and not washed your hands. Smoking while pregnant is a direct contributor to poor placental function which leads to fetal distress, low birthweight babies (and no, this is not a good thing, they aren't easier to push out, they still have the same head circumference but they have skinny bodies because they are compromised and can't get enough oxygen to help them grow), placental abruption and stillbirth and neonatal death, and distress in labour. Great start to life, that is. Fucking hate it. And if people say 'yeah, but I know XYZ who smoked and their kids are all fine', I would reply 'but how do you know they are fine? How do you know they won't develop asthma at 10; I did?' and also: Try saying that smoking doesn't hurt people to the parents of children who die in house fires from cigarette ends; to the parents of children who die of respiratory diseases or SIDS as a direct result of passive smoking, and to the family of Roy Castle who died of lung cancer brought on by passive smoking, when he had never smoked a cigarette in his life.