Started smoking at 17, had a few hits/cigs before then but for some reason at 17 it stuck. It was the nineties, and I was a pretty hardcore ballet program where everyone around me smoked. Smoked and .....ed about food basically. It was a strange duality. Smoking, yet being completely .... about the quality and quantity of food I ate. Even as I got older and would "high horse" about bad food, my friends and family would mock the cigs, and rightfully so. Luckily I have 4 brothers, so smack talk is old news to these ears, plus they were right!
My husband smoked too when I met him. When I got pregnant with our daughter 9 years ago I was violently ill. I didn't know I was pregnant at the time, and cigs were a barf trigger. Like all day long one. Started at about 3 weeks in that I couldn't keep food down if I smoked. It was easy to quit for that reason! Once I found out for sure I had a major duh moment, massive guilt at the doctor, etc. He said it's incredibly hard to "screw up a baby." Maybe he was trying to make me feel better, but he said as far as ingesting things, you gotta do it with a serious purpose. Drugs and alcoholism basically. I didn't fact check him, I took it for what it was and layed off. Our daughter is none the worse for wear though which I'm thankful for.
We tried to quit with patches various times. Failed. Tried to quit cold turkey, developed withdrawal angst that made us vicious toward each other and everyone around us.
Got pregnant again, same thing happened. Figured it out sooner this time, I'd like to say it was intuition but it wasn't. Crazies and boobs gave it away. This time even smelling it on John made me dry heave. He spent a lot of time in the shower. I remember it was harder not to start again after having him. With our daughter I think I was high strung and crazy about trying to be "perfect." She'd have crying fits and after feeding, checking diapers, burping, and holding her forever my husband would actually have to say "babies cry sometimes...you've ruled it all out, put her in her crib and let her work it out for 15 min or so!" I'd get all mad, but in the end he was right and she'd usually fall asleep and wake up with a gerber smile. Digressing here, sorry. Anyway with Richard, I breastfed like I did with Ashley but I swear I wanted to dig out the nicotine from beneath John's nails and lick it all off. Disgusting! I'd go out with friends, drink, smoke, and then do the pump and dump ritual after making sure the freezer was stocked.
John and I tried chantix/zyban after Richard was about one and a half to two years old. Ashley was old enough to ask questions, and going to school where she was taught smoking BAD. Can't refute it. Her judgment was rough, you could see her working out in her mind that she wanted to scold us but knew it wasn't appropriate, and trying to decide if us agreeing it was bad was a green light to throw in her .02.
Meds made us nuts. Bad dreams, no sleep, snippy and generally useless. We'd do our best with the kids and take out our angst on each other in subtle mean ways. It was not a happy time. When they went to bed the effort to be stable went down the drain. I can honestly say (and this my experience, if meds worked for you then I'm sincerely happy) that though things never got beyond psychological, I can see how meds could devolve a living situation into a domestic violence special on "COPS." Got to a point that we decided we'd rather be happy and smoke our PAD then hate everything and everyone.
We'd pretty much accepted this by the time the ecig came along. John had ordered a crappy trial one like 2 years ago that was so unremarkable I totally forgot about it. Then his sister and her husband showed us their Janty sticks and WOW. We were really impressed. This was about 3 weeks ago. They were super happy with it, and John and I could see why immediately even as current smokers. It tasted really good too! We kept hitting their Janty's in amazement haha.
Then we went on vacation with the kids. It was hard with their age difference. Harder having to divide "smoke time" out front of the hotel. It was a water park hotel, and the parents out front were hotboxing trying to get back to enjoying their family time. It was kinda pathetic, and we all avoided eye contact and didn't talk because that was strictly about getting a fix.
4 days after that, John and I went to the local shop and got our ego-t's. It's been SO much better. It fet good to explain to my daughter what it is. She was always polite about the smoking (we didn't do it around her) and is too innately polite to have said anything mean about it, but she took the opportunity to be happy for us with the egos. She can't get over that it's just water vapor. Also she's very interested in the vg/pg thing. A bit of a science nerd my kid, which is great. We keep our liquids in a cheap safe we got from walmart so no accidents happen, especially since we know she's curious and they smell good.
No crazies, and happy kids. I didn't think it was possible and had resigned myself to smoking to preserve sanity. I'm extremely grateful for the technology!
My husband smoked too when I met him. When I got pregnant with our daughter 9 years ago I was violently ill. I didn't know I was pregnant at the time, and cigs were a barf trigger. Like all day long one. Started at about 3 weeks in that I couldn't keep food down if I smoked. It was easy to quit for that reason! Once I found out for sure I had a major duh moment, massive guilt at the doctor, etc. He said it's incredibly hard to "screw up a baby." Maybe he was trying to make me feel better, but he said as far as ingesting things, you gotta do it with a serious purpose. Drugs and alcoholism basically. I didn't fact check him, I took it for what it was and layed off. Our daughter is none the worse for wear though which I'm thankful for.
We tried to quit with patches various times. Failed. Tried to quit cold turkey, developed withdrawal angst that made us vicious toward each other and everyone around us.
Got pregnant again, same thing happened. Figured it out sooner this time, I'd like to say it was intuition but it wasn't. Crazies and boobs gave it away. This time even smelling it on John made me dry heave. He spent a lot of time in the shower. I remember it was harder not to start again after having him. With our daughter I think I was high strung and crazy about trying to be "perfect." She'd have crying fits and after feeding, checking diapers, burping, and holding her forever my husband would actually have to say "babies cry sometimes...you've ruled it all out, put her in her crib and let her work it out for 15 min or so!" I'd get all mad, but in the end he was right and she'd usually fall asleep and wake up with a gerber smile. Digressing here, sorry. Anyway with Richard, I breastfed like I did with Ashley but I swear I wanted to dig out the nicotine from beneath John's nails and lick it all off. Disgusting! I'd go out with friends, drink, smoke, and then do the pump and dump ritual after making sure the freezer was stocked.
John and I tried chantix/zyban after Richard was about one and a half to two years old. Ashley was old enough to ask questions, and going to school where she was taught smoking BAD. Can't refute it. Her judgment was rough, you could see her working out in her mind that she wanted to scold us but knew it wasn't appropriate, and trying to decide if us agreeing it was bad was a green light to throw in her .02.
Meds made us nuts. Bad dreams, no sleep, snippy and generally useless. We'd do our best with the kids and take out our angst on each other in subtle mean ways. It was not a happy time. When they went to bed the effort to be stable went down the drain. I can honestly say (and this my experience, if meds worked for you then I'm sincerely happy) that though things never got beyond psychological, I can see how meds could devolve a living situation into a domestic violence special on "COPS." Got to a point that we decided we'd rather be happy and smoke our PAD then hate everything and everyone.
We'd pretty much accepted this by the time the ecig came along. John had ordered a crappy trial one like 2 years ago that was so unremarkable I totally forgot about it. Then his sister and her husband showed us their Janty sticks and WOW. We were really impressed. This was about 3 weeks ago. They were super happy with it, and John and I could see why immediately even as current smokers. It tasted really good too! We kept hitting their Janty's in amazement haha.
Then we went on vacation with the kids. It was hard with their age difference. Harder having to divide "smoke time" out front of the hotel. It was a water park hotel, and the parents out front were hotboxing trying to get back to enjoying their family time. It was kinda pathetic, and we all avoided eye contact and didn't talk because that was strictly about getting a fix.
4 days after that, John and I went to the local shop and got our ego-t's. It's been SO much better. It fet good to explain to my daughter what it is. She was always polite about the smoking (we didn't do it around her) and is too innately polite to have said anything mean about it, but she took the opportunity to be happy for us with the egos. She can't get over that it's just water vapor. Also she's very interested in the vg/pg thing. A bit of a science nerd my kid, which is great. We keep our liquids in a cheap safe we got from walmart so no accidents happen, especially since we know she's curious and they smell good.
No crazies, and happy kids. I didn't think it was possible and had resigned myself to smoking to preserve sanity. I'm extremely grateful for the technology!
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