Sleep On Your Left Side During Pregnancy: Here’s Why

Pregnancy is a great and beautiful thing, but it can also be excruciatingly difficult, particularly when it comes to sleeping. You twist and roll until your right arm is placed beneath your tummy and you find a lovely spot. Then it occurs to you that your doctor advised you to sleep on your left side when pregnant. It is one of those pregnancy tips that are truly quite crucial, even if it can be difficult to become comfortable enough to go completely asleep while you’re pregnant.

• During pregnancy, sleeping on your side is beneficial to your blood circulation. Some doctors recommend sleeping on your side because it improves blood flow to the placenta, resulting in a steady supply of nutrients and oxygen to your baby.

• Good blood circulation has numerous advantages, including the reduction of varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and leg edema.

• Many practitioners recommend that pregnant women sleep on their left side to promote blood flow through the vena cava, the primary vein that brings blood back to the heart from the lower body.

• If at all possible, try to avoid sleeping on your back as much as possible. The weight of the fetus can compress the inferior vena cava if you don’t sleep on your side during pregnancy, limiting blood flow between the heart and the fetus.

• There’s a slim chance that this compression will cause issues for mom and baby. Furthermore, the liver is located on the right side of the body and is responsible for lowering swelling in the hands and lower legs. The weight of the fetus is lifted off the liver, allowing it to function more efficiently.

• While sleeping on your left side is beneficial, the main goal is to avoid the difficulties that can result from resting on your back with your intestines and vena cava possibly constricted, such as backaches, hemorrhoids, indigestion, poor circulation, and blood pressure abnormalities.

• However, as their stomachs develop, most pregnant women find resting on their backs increasingly uncomfortable and cannot comfortably maintain that position for long periods of time.

The fetus is more likely to compress the inferior vena cava when a pregnant a woman is lying on her back

Prenatal Conundrum:

During pregnancy, as a fetus becomes larger and larger, it naturally puts increased strain on mama’s internal organs and blood vessels. When a growing baby plops onto mama’s bladder or kicks her in the intestines, it might be uncomfortable or painful. However, the recommendation for sleeping on one’s left side isn’t based on comfort. The mother’s inferior vena cava (IVC), a big vein that runs along the right side of the spine and is responsible for delivering blood from the lower part of the body to the heart, is a critical piece of the puzzle.

The fetus is more likely to compress the inferior vena cava (a large vein that carries the deoxygenated blood from the lower and middle body into the right atrium of the heart) while a pregnant woman is lying on her back, reducing the amount of blood returned to the heart. There aren’t many studies comparing sleeping on the right and left sides, but ideally, sleeping on the left side would result in less IVC compression than sleeping on the right.

Sleeping on one’s back during late pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of stillbirth

Why is compression such a bad thing?

Less blood pumped into the heart equals less blood pumped out of the heart, lowering mom’s blood pressure and lowering the oxygen content of both mom and baby’s blood. The infant receives oxygen from the mother’s blood.

• Most healthy women and fetuses should be able to adapt to a small decrease in cardiac output, but IVC compression poses a greater danger for pregnant women who already have blood pressure or breathing issues.

• Pregnant women who have asthma or sleep apnea (a disease in which breathing regularly begins and stops at night) may already have difficulty getting enough oxygen to their bodies or their kids.

• When these situations are combined with the restricted blood flow that comes with supine resting, the effects can be dangerously amplified. Sleeping on one’s back during late pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of stillbirth in a number of studies.

If you’re pregnant and can’t sleep on your left, turning over to the right is usually nothing to be concerned about. The important thing is to get enough sound sleep, not getting enough sleep may be far more harmful to your pregnancy than the tiny risk of IVC compression when laying on your right side.

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