According to the two reports in the theme issue, children whose mothers smoked during their pregnancy will experience sleep problems all throughout their first 12 years of life, and those mothers who used a certain type of antidepressant will lead to misbehavior of children at age 3.
Kristen C. Stone, Ph.D., of the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women and Infants Hospital, Providence, R.I. with her colleagues assessed 808 children whose mothers provided information about prenatal care and the like,resulted to a study about the case.
Of the five substances assessed-cocaine, opiate, marijuana, alcohol and nicotine-only prenatal exposure to nicotine was associated with sleep problems in children. “Higher levels of prenatal nicotine exposure predicted more sleep problems, specifically difficulty falling and staying asleep from one month to 12 years,” the researchers write.