Hello, my name is Andrea Drechsel and I am a junior nursing student at the University of North Dakota.  Currently I am taking a childbearing class and will soon be doing clinicals on the OB unit.  I joined the Lactnet list serve a few weeks ago and have had a wonderful time reading all of the topics presented so far.  I have always been excited to learn about breastfeeding and believe that breastfeeding is a vital part of an infant’s life.

A topic I am particularly interested in is the relationship between breastfeeding and smoking.  When my family members and friends have given birth and decided to breastfeed the topic of breastfeeding and smoking was never discussed with them.  I have done some research on the topic of breastfeeding and smoking and have learned that smoking has an affect on the duration of breastfeeding, quality of the breast milk, and weight gain of infants.  In a study with 510 mothers, the smoking mothers were more apt to quit breastfeeding within three months of delivery (Hill & Aldag, 1996).  In this study the mothers believed that insufficient milk supply was the reason for stopping breastfeeding.

In one study infants of women who smoked during breastfeeding would gain weight quicker than infants of non-smoking women because of the shorter duration of breastfeeding, which lead to the early initiation of bottle feeding (Nafstad, Jaakola, Hagen, Pedersen, Qvigstad, Botten, Kongerud, 1997).

A longitudinal study of 330 mothers and their infants evaluated the levels of urine cotinine in infants of mothers who smoked during breastfeeding.  Cotinine is a component of cigarettes similar to nicotine.  The levels of continine were 10 times higher in infants of smoking breastfeeding mothers, which concludes that continine has a high affinity in breast milk (Mascola, Van Vunakis, Tager, Speizer, Hanrahan, 1998).

My questions are what education does your agency provide to mothers who smoke and breastfeed and what do you all as professionals think about breastfeeding and smoking.

Thank you for your time,
Andrea Drechsel, SN


Hill, P., & Aldag, J. (1996). Smoking and Breastfeeding Status. Research in Nursing & Health. 9, 125-132.

Mascola, M., Van Vunakis, H., Tager, I., Speizer, F., & Hanrahan, J. (1998). Exposure of Young 

Infants to Environomental Tobacco Smoke: Breastfeeding Among Smoking Mothers. American Journal of Public Health. 88

(6), 893-896.

Nafstad, P., Jaakkola, J., Hagen, J., Pedersen, B., Qvigstad, E., Botten, G., & Kongerud, J. (1997). Weight Gain During the 

First Year of Life In Relation To Maternal Smoking and Breastfeeding In Norway. Journal of Epidemiology and Community 

Health. 51(3), 261-265.

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