The importance of sleep position during pregnancy

An increasing amount of data now shows that poor sleep – such as sleep disordered breathing and insomnia – has a negative impact on pregnancy outcomes. One study investigating placental implantation has shown that dominant sleeping position can also influence where the embryo will attach. This study looked at whether maternal socio-demographic and clinical characteristics influence the site of placental localisation.

Two more recent studies in New Zealand and Ghana, have shown that supine sleep (on your back) is independently associated with stillbirth and this was due to low birth weight during pregnancy. Both of the studies suggested that if sleeping on your back is associated with stillbirth, then altering the sleep position of pregnant women may reduce stillbirth by approximately 25%.

The majority of pregnant women (about 80%) spend some time sleeping supine, and it has been suggested that pregnant women would benefit from education and potential intervention. Several potential methods to reduce supine sleep include the use of mattress wedges or pillows  or other interventions such as the ‘tennis ball’ technique (where a tennis ball is placed on the mattress to encourage side sleeping) or even novel devices that could alert pregnant women to change position.

However, according to Dr Louise O’Brian (lead author of “Maternal sleep position: what do we know where do we go?”), it is important that these findings are repeated and confirmed in other studies before intervention studies are launched.

Read more:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4402690/#B19

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/14767058.2013.870547

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824023/

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Wikipedia.org

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