In pregnant women at the end of pregnancy, avoiding the position on the back during sleep can affect their well-being as well as that of the fetus.
It’s not easy to find the right position to sleep during the last months of pregnancy: difficulty finding a good position, untimely awakenings and sometimes even nightmares …
Choosing the right position, however, can be a very important factor in the health of both mother and baby.
Avoid sleeping on your back
According to the authors of this new study, most pregnant women spend about 25% of their time sleeping on their backs, which can be a risk factor for stillbirths and low birth weight. This relationship may be due in part to an increase in sleep breathing disorders and oxygen deprivation for the fetus when sleeping on its back.
The study published on August 15 in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine looked at 25 healthy women with two nights of sleep. The researchers observed them one night when they slept normally and one when they wore the Prenabelt, pregnancy belt that allows you to stay in a sleeping position on the side.
Convincing results
The results show that the median time spent on the back went from 48.3 minutes during the control night to 28.5 minutes during the intervention night thanks to this belt.
At the same time, the researchers observed an improvement in maternal and fetal physiological parameters during the night of the procedure, with an increase in the median minimum oxygen saturation of the mother, less maternal oxygen desaturations and less decelerations in the fetal heart rate. .
Improvement of physiological parameters
For the study’s principal investigator, Jane Warland, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. “Our results suggest that women can sleep comfortably by wearing a device around their waist that prevents them from sleeping on their back.”
She adds: “The use of positional therapy to prevent the pregnant woman from sleeping on her back can reduce sleep in this position in late pregnancy and have beneficial effects on maternal and fetal health, with minimal impact on maternal perception of sleep quality and sleep time “.
The study authors made it clear that more research is needed to further explore the risks and benefits of positional therapy in late pregnancy.
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