Sleep position affects stillbirth risk

A new study from New Zealand alerts pregnant women to the importance of sleep position in the final days of pregnancy. For women who slept on their right side on the night before delivering, they had double the risk of late stillbirth compared with those women who slept on the left side.

The risk is still very minimal. The risk increases to 3.93 in 1,000 births from 1.96 in 1,000 births. The finding may be more interesting than an actual health risk. “It’s a new hypothesis and means we should start to look at this problem much more closely. It’s really a starting point for future research,” Tomasina Stacey, from the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Auckland explained.

A link was also found between sleeping regularly during the day or sleeping longer than average at night and stillbirth.

Stacey said there may be restricted blood supply to the baby when a mother sleeps on her back or right side once the baby is large in the later stages of pregnancy. Her findings were published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

If the findings bear out, this would be a simple, cheap and easy way to deter late stage still birth: modify the sleeping habits of the mother. “It’s something that’s very easily modifiable. You don’t need to take any drugs and there are no side effects,” emphasized Stacey.

Source: BMJ, Reuters