Sleeping on your back may not aggravate the consequences of pregnancy



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By Lisa Rapaport

(Reuters Health) – Although doctors often tell pregnant women that it is safest to sleep left, a new study suggests that sleeping in other positions might not be a problem.

Researchers examined outcome data for 8,709 pregnant women who completed at least one sleep questionnaire by 30 weeks of gestation. In total, 1,903 women, or 22%, had serious complications such as dangerously high blood pressure, stillbirth or a small newborn given his gestational age.

The study found that women who slept on the right side or on the back were no more exposed to serious complications than those who slept on the left side.

These findings should reassure many pregnant women who might be concerned about harming their baby by sleeping on their backs or occupying this position overnight, said Dr. Robert Silver, lead author of the study and chair. of the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Toronto. Utah Medical School in Salt Lake City.

"There are some disadvantages to avoiding sleep," said Silver by email.

"Some women may have trouble sleeping on the left side and they can not control their movements during sleep," Silver added. "Even with neat messages, it is possible to increase anxiety in women who wake up on their backs and in guilt, shame, and self-blame in women who experience negative consequences of pregnancy, such as stillbirth. "

Previous studies have associated sleep on the back or the right side with an increased risk of serious complications of pregnancy, as these positions could compress the blood vessels feeding the uterus, noted researchers in obstetrics and gynecology.

Women in this study were more likely to have serious complications of pregnancy when they were overweight or obese, than they smoked, that they were suffering from hypertension or of diabetes before their pregnancy.

Neither the positions of women when they have fallen asleep or woken up, nor the positions in which they could move during the night, seem to have had an impact on the risk of complications.

The researchers also examined objectively measured sleep positions for a subgroup of women who had undergone sleep studies at home for their nocturnal breathing problems. For these women, there was also no significant difference in the risk of pregnancy complications depending on whether they slept on the back more than half the time or less often.

The study was not designed to prove whether, or how, sleep positions could have a direct bearing on the outcome of pregnancy. He also did not examine the link between sleep status and complications during the last weeks of pregnancy.

One of the limitations of the study is that there were only about a dozen stillbirths – which may have been too small to detect significant differences in this outcome depending on the sleeping position, note the team.

Even then, the results should reassure women, said Dr. Nathan Fox, clinical professor at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and vice president of Maternal Fetal Medicine Associates in New York.

"Pregnant women should sleep in the position they find most comfortable," said Fox, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the study, e-mailing. "The few women who have pregnancy complications should be reassured by the fact that this was not due to their sleeping position."

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2mbNRwO and https://bit.ly/2kfKVP9 in Obstetrics and Gynecology, online September 10, 2019.

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