Look; we know there is a lot of – often conflicting – advice out there for what a pregnant mama should or should not do or eat or participate in.
And now it seems a new study has just gone and added a whole new thing to worry about when you are pregnant, namely how you sleep at night.
A rather startling new study now claims to have found a link between sleeping on your back in late pregnancy and stillbirth. And because stillbirths are such a tragic occurrence for any family (and because they are still happening in around 1% of all pregnancies), scientists and doctors are obviously always on the lookout for answers about why they are happening.
In the vast majority of cases there does not seem to be any good answer as to why it happens, – a mother seems to be pregnant with a perfectly healthy baby one day and carrying a baby who has passed away the next, but in the latest attempt to try and find an explanation, this study set out to examine what happens when mothers in the third trimesters of their pregnancy lay flat on their backs for a longer period.
And what the small study (only 29 women took part) found, was that when an expectant mum lays completely flat on her back for a prolonged period of time, the baby’s heart rate and activity changes to the point that the baby’s oxygen supply is compromised.
The study’s lead author, Professor of Maternal Fetal Medicine at the University of Auckland Peter Stone, explained that what the study shows is that it back-sleeping or lying may be especially dangerous to mothers who have other, underlying medical conditions, or even if the baby has other medical conditions.
“Our controlled study found that lying on your back can add extra stress to the baby, contributing to the risk of stillbirth,” he said in a press release. “The risk is likely to be increased further in women with underlying conditions.”
