ABSTRACT

Aim:

The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between mother’s cigarette smoking habit and newborn’s weight, height and head circumference measurements.

Materials and Methods:

The study group is composed of 130 mothers and their 130 newborn babies. The mothers gave birth to their babies between December 2008 and April 2009 at Çankırı State Hospital and Çankırı Private Karatekin Hospital. “Mother and Newborn Introduc-tions Forms” were used to collect data about the mother and the newborn. For data analysis, the benefits of frequency and Chi Square tests were used.

Results:

76.1% of the mothers included in the study were non-smokers. Of the cigarette smok-ers, 44.9% have been smoking for 6-10 years, and 58.1% have been smoking 1-10 cigarettes a day. 45.2% of the smokers gave up smoking during their pregnancy, and 56.2 % identified themselves as passive-smokers during their pregnancy period. Most of the mothers considered smoking as being harmful to the mother and the baby.

Conclusions:

The result of the analysis shows that, the relationship between cigarette smoking of the mothers and the weight of the babies is statistically significant (χ2 =37.631, df=6, p<0.01). The smoking habit of the mother does not significantly influence the head circumference (χ2 =11.397, df=6, p>0.05) and height (χ2 =6.160, df=6, p>0.05) measurements of the babies, although the values are lower than the newborns of non-smoking mothers.