I'm pregnant and scared about nicotine gum

[ginacummin]

Hi, I became pregnant in October. I was soooo happy. I am 25 and healthy. The problem is that I quit smoking a few years ago, but I got hooked to nicotine gum. I didn't know I was pregnant until I was five weeks along, and I didn't know that nicotine gum could be harmful to the fetus. At that time, I was chewing a 2mg piece about once an hour. When I found out I was pregnant I still didn't know it was harmful, but decided to go ahead and cut down on the gum. I could go up to a week without having a piece, and then I would have a day where I would chew a total of 4mg, but I was biting the 2mg piece in thirds and chewing those little pieces throughout the day. I recently checked up on nicotine gum online and was horrified. What have I done? I saw that nicotine gum could be harmful to the fetus, but nothing said how often there were fetal side effects and what they were. Please help me, I am 13.5 weeks along now and scared to death. Please tell me what the chances are that something will be wrong with our baby, and what the side effect/s might be. Thank you so much.

[Purple98Lady]

I would stop the gum and chew other gum. As with smoking during preg. nicotine does effect your baby and it can cause a low birth weight. Think healthy and do whatever it takes to have a healthy newborn. Good Luck

[Dr. Joshua]

It sounds like you've protected your baby by quitting smoking well before you got pregnant. By changing to nicotine gum, you've eliminated thousands of toxins that are found in cigarette smoke, and left just one: nicotine. Chewing nicotine gum usually results in lower nicotine concentrations compared to smoking cigarettes. Therefore, the harmful effects of nicotine are also reduced.

Pregnant women, additionally, metabolize nicotine significantly faster. That leads to even lower nicotine levels.

After you found out you were pregnant, you properly cut down your gum consumption to such low levels that could be called negligible. That was a good thing to do.

More than 10% of pregnant mothers continue to smoke throughout the pregnancy. Smoking roughly doubles the chances of low birth weight and preterm labor. Birth defects are rare, and certainly this means that the vast majority of smokers' babies are born healthy.

In the light of this information, it is highly unlikely that you have harmed your baby with your nicotine habit. Now that you've quit altogether, there is no reason to suspect that the moderate nicotine intake should have harmed your baby.

My advice is to put the nicotine issue behind you and focus on keeping yourself healthy and enjoy your pregancy.

[ginacummin]

Thank you both so much. I really appreciate both of your replies, and Dr. Joshua, I know that you're very busy so thank you for easing my mind. PurpleLady, thank you as well. I should have put in my post that I did quit chewing the gum. It's a little frustrating because sometimes one piece just sounds so good. But I am not going to give in, and I know that craving will go away. I just didn't know if my baby was going to come out missing an arm or with some disease that would allow them to never walk or talk or something. I would still love that baby, but if I caused something like that, I could never live with myself.