Supporting smoke-free pregnancies

One of the best ways to reduce risk for you and your baby is to have a smoke-free pregnancy.

Stopping smoking helps your baby take in all the nutrients they need, so they can grow and develop.

To help support you and your baby, we’ll ask you whether you smoke or have ever smoked at your booking appointment, and again at 36 weeks.

Support to stop smoking

If you smoke, we will:

• offer you advice about stopping smoking in pregnancy
• refer you to our stop smoking service for pregnant women. This service offers one to one support with trained specialist advisers and, if you need treatment to help you stop, advice on nicotine replacement therapy products
• help other members of your family who smoke access support to stop smoking, to help you reduce the risk of second-hand smoke.

During your pregnancy, we’ll offer you a carbon monoxide test, whether you smoke or not. This is because you can have raised carbon monoxide levels for other reasons.

To take the test, we’ll ask you to blow into a small tube. This will tell us how much carbon monoxide you have in your system.

We sometimes see higher than normal levels of carbon monoxide if you have faulty gas equipment in your home. We’ll advise you to get your gas equipment checked if your test results are higher than normal, and you do not smoke or live with someone who smokes.