COMMENTARY | I began smoking at the ripe old age of 12.
At first it was just a few a week, whatever my friends and I could steal from our parents, but then it became more. As friends’ siblings crossed the age 18 threshold, they for an extra dollar would bring a pack or two for us and it became a regular thing. I smoked to stop eating, I smoked to lose weight. I smoked to stay awake, relieve stress, and be a “badass.”
As much as I hate to say it now, I smoked during the pregnancy of my first child, which I had at 17. I smoked in fact, up until the first ultrasound of the pregnancy of my second child at age 19. Then my life changed. I had an emergency ultrasound at about 11 weeks because her heartbeat was irregular, and I had lost 10 pounds, weighing in at 120 pounds, and was severely dehydrated. I am 5-foot-8. Seeing her little body on the screen, being told that she was so very small for where she should really be, and being hooked up to line after line of IV fluids, talking with the doctor and a nutritionist about what I was doing that needed to change we set a plan. I had to report in weekly. We took baby steps. “Every time you want to light up that smoke, remember how scary it was when we could not find the baby’s heart beat.”
Enough said. I quit. The last smoke I had, I had going in to the doctors office that morning. A joke I heard at the time went something like this, “I am good at quitting (smoking), I have done it hundreds of times!” People tell me I am lucky I got a “warning” like the above. She died and was born still, a few months later. Was it due to smoking? No. But it sure did not help matters. After her death I vowed, as long as I was “planning” to have a child, or not taking precautions not to, I would be as healthy as I could in the event I became with child again. That blessing arrived to me a year later.
To this day, I still enjoy the smell of lit cigarettes. But nearly a decade removed, I have never started to smoke again. I am not bothered when others do it, as it should be my choice to or not to, as it was mine for so many years. But maybe in high school, when kids are carrying around the “egg” or “flour” babies, the smoker kids should carry around and oxygen tank as preparation for the future. Give them knowledge, as in a group you can’t save them all, but you may be able to save a few.