Drug addicts usually suffer severe liver, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and nervous system damage. Their body is so weakened by severe intoxication that any physiological stress, such as pregnancy and childbirth, can lead to very serious complications, up to a lethal outcome.
Many girls and young women often wonder how drugs can influence the conception of a child and its future bearing if the experience of taking drugs has been in the past or the drugs used are rather weak? It is necessary to remember once and for all, there are no weak drugs. Everyone has probably heard the hypothesis that there are no former drug addicts. In part this is true. After all, drugs start in the body so strong destructive process that even strong immunity passes before him, not to mention the body of a woman expecting a child.
The sexual desire of drug addicts is usually reduced due to a sharp drop in the level of sex hormones that ensure the conception of the child and work to preserve the pregnancy that has come. In spite of this, 25% of addicts with experience have one or two children. Unfortunately, these children are doomed to a life burdened by severe chronic ailments.
If we consider in more detail how drugs can affect the conception of a child even at the stage of gamete formation, then approximately this picture will be drawn: in the formed gametes under the influence of narcotic substances, chromosomes break up, which in turn leads to abortion (miscarriage) of the embryo. Well, if it happens at the earliest stages, in this case, bleeding occurs and the pregnancy is interrupted. Often there are reverse situations in which the conception of a child passes, at first glance, smoothly, but over time, drug-damaged chromosome embryos cause severe chromosomal abnormalities. The embryo becomes an embryo, the embryo develops into the fetus, and a viable fetus develops a serious delay in development, anomalies of the brain, in which a full life is practically excluded. Why does this happen?
The toxic effect of drugs on the embryo can be indirect (disruption of the formation of hormones, changes in the uterine mucosa) and immediate (damage to the cell structure of the fetus). Any drugs can affect the placenta, it becomes fragile, poorly passes oxygen, thereby causing severe fetal hypoxia. The tiny organism of a developing child becomes dependent on narcotic substances taken by a future mother. Drugs, having a small enzyme mass, very slowly come out of the body, and for a long time circulate through the fetal circulatory system.
A drug dependent future mother rarely wears out a baby before the due date, and this is doubly dangerous. Inadequate body weight is a very common phenomenon with drug dependence during conception and pregnancy. Accordingly, the birth of a child before the term, and even with insufficient body weight, threatens to underdevelop many organs, often with a fatal outcome. Newborn mothers drug addicts often suffer from hydrocephalus (a significant reduction in the brain with normal growth rates of other parts of the body). The more dangerous hydrocephalus is known to many: severe dementia, epilepsy, mental retardation and further problems with adaptation in the social environment.
The question of how drugs can affect the conception of a child, we have already considered. It will not be superfluous to recall what harm they do to the already born child. The first 24-48 hours after his birth, the child of a drug dependent mother develops a true abstinence syndrome (drug hangover). If a pregnant woman used methadone or other drugs that are soluble in fats, the child will feel the symptoms of drug dependence not immediately, but two to three weeks later, sometimes later. Signs of narcotic "breakage" in a child are: fever, swelling of the nasopharyngeal mucosa, sweating, sneezing and even convulsions. There may be periods of overly active or, conversely, too weak breast sucking, with a clear tendency to regurgitation. The child often very much tears, he is whimsical, hungry and excited.
If it is known that the newly-made mother is a drug addict, then in the delivery room she is necessarily given naloxone. Then the urine of the mother and the child is analyzed for the content of narcotic substances. Some drugs can cause a newborn with a very strong withdrawal syndrome, which requires immediate therapy with diazepam or phenobarbital. Such therapy is performed until the symptoms disappear completely (from 4 days to 3-4 months).
Children whose health is undermined by the prolonged impact of drugs taken by mothers during pregnancy at a later age very often suffer from deviations in mental development, they are difficult to learn and communicate, nervous and aggressive. The statistics are inexorable: the conception of a child in a state of drug intoxication, bearing and the birth of it with a hangover syndrome make the future life of this baby sadly predictable. Almost half of these children, beginning with adolescence, are taking drugs.
Therefore, before thinking about conceiving a child, it is necessary to realize that the nine months that a person spends in the womb of a mother are sometimes a decisive period affecting his entire future life. Overcome the drug addiction and give birth to a healthy happy baby is the heroic feat to which a woman who believes that there are light drugs and former drug addicts should be capable.