For pregnant women, reducing the risk for stillbirth may be as simple as sleeping on their left side, New Zealand researchers suggest. In fact, women in the study who didn’t sleep on their left side had twice the risk of having a stillborn infant, the researchers noted. Overall, “the increase in risk [from right-sided sleeping] is small for the individual,” stressed lead author Tomasina Stacey, a graduate student in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Auckland. However, “as many women do not sleep on their left side in late pregnancy, it may have an important impact on a population level,” she reasoned.
