Six months pregnant Nicole Richie has denied yesterday’s report from The NY Post that she was seen smoking outside of two different restaurants in NY. She says through a rep that not only did she not smoke, she also was nowhere near NY recently and has been out of the country:

Richie’s rep tells Extra that accounts of Richie smoking are “irresponsible and untrue.” And while columnist Cindy Adams claims Richie lit up outside New York restaurants DaSilvano and Nobu (with fiance and father-to-be Joel Madden, even), Richie and Madden are reportedly abroad and nowhere near New York.

[From USWeekly]

Richie has said that she wants a natural birth and told Diane Sawyer that she doesn’t allow people to smoke around her and has given up anything that could possibly harm the baby, including caffeine and sushi. While there is only hearsay to back up reports of a pregnant Nicole behaving irresponsibly, there’s another pseudo celebrity in Britain who can’t deny pictures of her smoking after going on a drinking bender three months into her pregnancy. Former Atomic Kitten member and “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” winner Kerry Katona, who recently announced that she is due with her fourth child in May, was photographed smoking after she reportedly downed four martinis and a shot of vodka:

Kerry, twice Celebrity Mum of the Year, downed FOUR MARTINIS and a slug of VODKA in a pub with pals—despite being 12 weeks into an already troubled fourth pregnancy.

Then she popped to a restaurant over the road for a Chinese meal—and puffed greedily on a ciggie outside in the cold. One surprised drinker said: “Everyone knows Kerry’s pregnant so it was a bit of a shock to see her drinking and smoking.

“But she just said, ‘What the hell, a couple can’t hurt’.

“She went to the bar and ordered pints for the others and Martini for herself. It was the same round when the others were buying—and she also had a shot of vodka. She knocked it back in one, winced and then wiped her hand across her mouth and put the glass down.”

Her behaviour is even more shocking after her pregnancy with Heidi was beset by a string of miscarriage scares before the litle girl was born in February.

And the 27-year-old ex-Atomic Kitten star was also rushed into hospital last month—on the day she announced she was pregnant again. At first Kerry—who is married to ex-cabbie Mark Croft, 37, and also has daughters, Molly, six, and Lilly-Sue, four, by her first husband, former Westlife star Brian McFadden—was told she’d lost the baby.

But when she returned later the same day still feeling unwell, doctors discovered its heartbeat.

[From News Of The World via Gossip Rocks]

News of The World isn’t the most reliable source, and while Katona was photographed smoking, they may have embellished the part about how much booze she downed. There was a lot of controversy over a statement that Rachel Weisz made last year about how European doctors said that it was ok to drink while you’re pregnant – except not in the first three months while the fetus was most vulnerable. I had my only pregnancy in America, and my doctors told me not to drink at all. Once a midwife said I could have a glass of wine if I was in labor and I looked at her like she had two heads. Some obstetricians will tell you that an occasional glass is fine, especially in Europe, but it doesn’t seem worth the risk to your baby to me.

There was a recent study that found that moderate drinking posed no ascertainable risk to the baby after three months, and British associations are rethinking a ban on alcohol during pregnancy. When there’s no benefit to the baby from drinking though, why would you risk your baby’s health?

So Kerry Katona is supposedly downing shots and martinis when she’s barely three months’ pregnant, and she’s justifying smoking by making the ridiculous statement that stress from not smoking is worse for the baby! Commentors on ONTD on the post about Nicole Richie smoking brought up this photo that appeared in The Roanoke Times about a woman worrying about stress to her fetus from nearby construction noise – while she was smoking a cigarette. Snopes.com verifies that this is an actual newspaper clipping that was not doctored.