Is it safe to smoke marijuana during pregnancy?
If you conduct an internet search regarding the dangers of marijuana use during pregnancy, you’ll probably get mixed results.
With all of the conflicting information out there it can be difficult to discern the facts from the fiction, but ask yourself this:
Is there really such a thing as “acceptable risk” when it comes to the health of your unborn baby? Wouldn’t even the slightest risk of danger be enough to suggest that marijuana use should be stopped completely during your pregnancy?
Marijuana and Pregnancy: The Whole Truth
Some claim that smoking marijuana during pregnancy is entirely safe and may even help with pregnancy side effects such as cravings and morning sickness, while others insist that smoking the drug can cause serious developmental problems to the fetus.
By now, we all know the dangers of smoking tobacco when pregnant and recent research seems to confirm that marijuana causes many of the same effects.
Researchers in the Netherlands conducted a study in which they closely monitored the pregnancy of over 5,000 women who used marijuana during their pregnancy, and compared those results to a control group of non-marijuana users. This research clearly indicated, “Women who smoke during pregnancy may impair their baby’s growth and development in the womb.”
Low birth weight babies, as well as those born with a smaller head circumference, are more prone to memory and behavioral problems later in childhood, and these factors have also been linked to a number of developmental disorders and physical problems. These two conditions, low birth weight and smaller head circumference of the baby, is what marijuana use during pregnancy typically causes.
On average, marijuana users gave birth to smaller babies with smaller heads than those in the control group, including women who regularly smoked tobacco cigarettes.
Doctors have long known that low birth weight babies have a higher risk of developing developmental delays, including, but not limited to memory problems and learning difficulties.
They are also at higher risk for developing certain diseases. This is why doctors are so careful when it comes to premature deliveries, and why they urge women to take their pregnancies to full term.
This danger also applies to babies who are born to regular marijuana users, as they share many of the same characteristics and risk factors as those babies who are born prematurely.
Why is Marijuana So Dangerous during Pregnancy?
Without getting too scientific, marijuana is a drug which affects certain receptors in the brain, causing many short and long term physiological effects. The active ingredient in marijuana (THC), when used during pregnancy, is thought to alter the activity of certain brain receptors which may in turn cause developmental problems in the womb.
Making Sense of It All
For years, those people with problem-free pregnancies, who either smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol during pregnancy, swore that that the new reports pointing to the possible dangers of these two substances was nothing but a myth. Sadly, we are the seeing the same thing with marijuana use.
There will always be exceptions to the rule—babies who are born perfectly healthy to a smoking, drinking or marijuana-smoking mother—but the research is fairly clear that marijuana can indeed negatively impact the health of the baby, and should be completely avoided during pregnancy.
Thanks for some good advice on smoking marijuana. I am 2 months into pregnancy now and I have quit smoking everything because of it.
Mainly wanted to know exactly what damage it could have caused my baby. Thank god I quit this stuff when i did!
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Dear author, did you actually read the study conducted in the Netherlands? You will find although there were 7,531 women in the study, only 220 smoked cannabis at all during pregnancy. Of that group, 81% quit after discovering they were pregnant, leaving only 43 who used cannabis throughout pregnancy (most of whom were foreign-born, low income women). Of all cannabis users, 68% also reported using alcohol during pregnancy (20% throughout pregnancy) and 85% reported tobacco use during pregnancy (54% throughout pregnancy). Amazingly, the study analyses do not control for either alcohol or tobacco use by cannabis-using pregnant women. It would have been difficult to do so, since only 20 women using cannabis throughout pregnancy did not also use tobacco and/or alcohol throughout.