Further to yesterday's post ...
Women smoking during pregnancy is never an easy topic to discuss on air when you are restricted to a handful of soundbites so hats off to Pat Nurse and my colleague Angela Harbutt who did a number of interviews yesterday for local and national media.
I won't list them all but you can hear Angela on the Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2). Click here. It's about five minutes in.
Angela has also written an article on the subject. Here's a taste:
Extreme measures such as police-style breathalysers, that damage the fundamental relationship between midwife and pregnant woman, or cause stress and anxiety to the mother can hardly be good for a baby’s wellbeing.
And where does ‘protection’ of the baby end? Will NICE be advocating tests for alcohol consumption on pregnant women next? Will midwives have free reign to rummage in our kitchen cupboards to check our diets are up to scratch?
If this is truly where it is heading (and show me a smoking policy that doesn’t lead to similar calls for other lifestyle activities) then why doesn’t public health just lock up all pregnant women in a sanatorium for nine months and be done with it?
See Midwives made meddlers: a recipe for disaster (The Free Society)
I caught Pat on Look North (BBC1) last night, sandwiched (not literally) between a midwife and a spokesman for Mumsnet. You can see it here. If I remember it was about halfway through the programme.
This morning she added BBC Tees to her list of interviews.
Pat also brought to my attention an article published by the New Scientist in 2010. Written by journalist and author Linda Geddes, it's called Bumpology: Fed up of the booze and cigs police.
Worth reading.