Is it safe for a pregnant woman to lie on her back? For women in the third trimester of their pregnancy, lying down on their back may place stress on the fetus, which could increase the risk of stillbirth in certain cases, a small new study from New Zealand suggests.
However, experts say that it’s too early to make recommendations based on the findings, and that pregnant women do not need to change the way they lie down as a result of the study.
“It is not possible to draw a firm link between maternal position and stillbirth risk from this study and further robust research is needed,” Hannah Knight, a spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “Women should sleep in a position that is comfortable for them,” Knight said.
In the study, the researchers at the University of Auckland monitored 29 healthy, pregnant women and their fetuses while the women lay down in different positions — on their right or left side, and on their back — for 30 minutes at a time. The women were 35 to 38 weeks
pregnant.
The researchers found that, when the women lay on their backs or their right side, the fetuses were more likely to be in a sleep-like state that’s associated with using less oxygen, compared to when the women lay on their left side.
In addition, when the women lay on their back, the fetuses were more likely to switch from being in a more active state to the sleep-like state, compared to when the women lay on their left side.
Overall, the researchers said that their findings suggest that, for the women studied, lying on the back is mildly stressful for the baby, and the fetus adapts to this by switching to a state where less oxygen is consumed.
They speculated that in certain cases, such as when the fetus is already deprived of adequate oxygen due to other factors, the fetus might not be able to adapt to the extra stress that’s imposed by the mother lying on her back. However, none of the women in the study had a stillbirth.
All of the women gave birth at full term, and neither the newborns nor their mothers experienced any complications.
@Livescience.
During pregnancy, a woman should take preventive steps to take very good care of the baby health. Therefore, they used to take positive lessons from experts on what to do and what not to do during pregnancy. Lying on the back during pregnancy is also harmful as according to this article and I hope pregnant women should follow certain instructions from this article to take care of their pregnancy.
Pregnancy Care
I prefer not to sleep back during last three months of pregnancy. During my pregnancy time I've suffered a lot back pain, so for that reason I avoided sleeping on back.