Pregnancy and illegal drugs - enough info and support or not?

If you want to stop smoking there is a host of government funded initiatives to support you - groups, one 2 ones, telephone buddies, patches, chewing gum, inhalers, giving up plans and tools to help you break your own individual smoking cycle....There is even a section dedicated to helping pregnant mothers to stop smoking (also how father's smoking can impact on unborn children). However, there seems to be a significant lack of readily available information regarding how illegal drug use during pregnancy can affect your unborn child.

It is common knowledge that using any substance when pregnant has the potential to cause negative consequences for developing babies, but it is interesting that you can watch numerous videos of a foetus' reactions to cigarette smoke, but getting the medical facts on how illegal drugs affect your unborn child is not nearly as accessible. Could this be a reflection of our countries determination to ignore wide spread drug use and addiction or is it that the facts, as it were, are still relatively unknown?

Should there me more information on how illicit drugs affect pregnant woman and their developing children even if the facts are still unclear?

 

Babies in withdrawal

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/one-in-500-babies-now-born-drug-dependent-1693502.html

This article in The Independent highlights the increasing problem of babies born suffering withdrawal due to their mothers drug use. This problem is getting bigger and bigger whilst government funded initiatives to tackle the problems are getting smaller. More and more specialist units are closing, leaving the few experienced drug and alcohol midwives to deal with unacceptable work loads. The figures in this article are likely to be underestimating the number of mothers to be experiencing drug and alcohol related pregnancy problems and something has to change.

If you are experiencing addiction problems and need some support there are a variety of private clinics who can help – get in touch.