Sleeping woman
A new study has found a link between mum's sleeping habits and stillbirth - however more research is needed.
Researchers in New Zealand found that those who slept on their back or right side the night before giving birth were twice as likely to have a stillborn baby compared with those who slept on their left side.
Women who slept regularly during the day in their last month of pregnancy were also at double the risk of stillbirth, the study says.
But the researchers urged women not to act on their findings until they were further investigated and confirmed.
Researchers from the University of Auckland interviewed 155 women who had given birth to a stillborn baby after 28 weeks. They asked about their various sleep behaviours and compared the results to interviews with 310 women who had live babies.
The results showed no link between snoring or daytime sleepiness and the risk of late stillbirth, but found the risk of stillbirth for those sleeping on the left side was 1.96 per 1000 births and 3.93 per 1000 births for any other position.
The authors said restricted blood flow to the baby when a pregnant woman lies on her back or right side for long periods may explain the link, but they said more research was required to investigate the mechanisms.
''This is an observation, and confirmatory studies are needed before public health recommendations can be made. However, if our findings are confirmed, promoting optimal sleep position in late pregnancy may have the potential to reduce the incidence of late stillbirth,'' the researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal.
One of the researchers, Professor Lesley McCowan, said the study also found that women who did not get up to go to the toilet the night before giving birth were also at double the risk of stillbirth compared with women who got up at least once.
