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THE DISCOVERY that women who stop smoking in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy can reduce the risk of having premature or underweight babies is crucially important information for expectant mothers. Protecting her baby is probably the strongest motivation a woman experiences. And if it serves to improve her own health as a result of giving up cigarettes during pregnancy, so much the better.

An international study conducted at University College Cork and five other universities has found that women who do not quit smoking within the first 15 weeks of pregnancy are three times more likely than non-smokers to give birth prematurely and twice as likely to have low-birth-weight babies. Those who stop smoking in the required time reduce their risk rate to the level of non-smokers. In addition, it was found that those pregnant women who stopped smoking did not become more stressed than those who continued.