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And because Gaston County has one of the highest rates of pregnant smokers in the state, the county desperately wants to improve the issue.

Inside the Gaston County Health Department, there are messages, pictures and drawings that depict the harms of smoking, especially when it pertains to soon-to-be mothers.

"It doesn't just affect Mom, as far as what can happen with the cancer and things that happen to an individual who smokes, but that little baby who's trying to survive in the mom's stomach,” said Cynthia Robinson of the county’s health department. “That's important that Mom doesn't smoke so it doesn't constrict that air that baby's trying to get.”

Beginning this summer, Gaston, Durham and Robeson counties will test a new state-funded program designed to help pregnant women quit smoking.

"The state's going to watch all three of us and figure out what's the best model, what worked well in Durham County, what worked well in Gaston County, how can we pull ideas from all these different counties together and come up with the best smoking-cessation program for pregnant teenagers," Gaston County Health Director Colleen Bridger said.

In North Carolina, the numbers from 2001 are staggering. Outside of the bigger, more urban counties like Mecklenburg and Durham, the percentage of women in rural counties who reported that they smoked during pregnancy is above 20 percent.

According to the American Lung Association's official Web site, 12 percent of mothers in 1999 were reported to have smoked during their pregnancy -- a decline of 30 percent since 1990. But Bridger said those statistics can be misleading because getting young women to admit they smoke, and then subsequently wanting help in return, is a big problem.

"I wonder if 15 years ago we had known as much as we do now, as many women would admit to the fact that they smoked during pregnancy," she said.

Among the many harmful effects of smoking during pregnancy are low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, premature births and stillbirths.