How to Sleep Better During Pregnancy

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Part of the video series: Pregnancy Health Tips

Summary: To sleep better during pregnancy, the use of a body pillow or several smaller pillows can be helpful to prop up the legs, hips and stomach. Maintain a regularly nighttime routine to get into a better sleeping pattern with helpful information from a certified nurse-midwife in this free video on pregnancy questions.

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By Michelle Collins
eHow Presenter

Contact: http://www.vanderbiltnursemidwives.org

Michelle Collins has more than 20 years of experience in the field of maternal-child health, first as a labor, delivery and pediatric nurse, and currently as a certified nurse-midwife....read more

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"Can I give you some information about sleeping better during pregnancy? Sure. Hi! I'm Michelle Collins, certified nurse-midwife and professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University. Some people think that lack of sleep is mother nature's way of training us for becoming new parents. Well, sleeplessness during pregnancy can be related to hormones but it can also be related to those frequent trips to the bathroom that your bladder is causing you to make. Once you're over twenty weeks pregnant, you want to try to avoid sleeping flat on your back because you compress the large blood vessel that's down the back of your spine between your uterus and your spine. And so putting a pillow underneath your hip so that it's elevated slightly so that if you should roll over on your back during the middle of the night, your hip will be slightly elevated and you won't be flat on your back. Also, body pillows are great things to have when you're pregnant. You can tuck it in between your knees and also in between the lower part of your leg and also tuck it underneath your belly. Even if you don't have a large body pillow, tuck a little pillow underneath your belly when you're lying on your side and that can help make you a lot more comfortable. Things that you can also do to help you sleep better is avoid stimulating things like caffeine and alcohol before you go to bed. Also, using good sleep hygiene techniques like turning off your TV and radio when you're trying to sleep, taking a nice, warm bath or shower before you go to bed and just relaxing by reading or doing something that relaxes you. If you've laid in bed for twenty to thirty minutes and you aren't falling asleep, get up, move around and then come back to bed when you're feeling a little bit more drowsy. Sometimes but very rarely medication might be necessary for a woman to be able to rest well during pregnancy and a woman can talk to her midwife or her obstetrical provider if she feels that it's becoming a problem for her."