Newsworthy…… I think not…..

by

Sometimes I read rubbish stuff; mainly from the trash magazines that I read for a guilty pleasure but more often from the rags we call newspapers. 

Today the headline that caught my eye in the Metro was:

 “Sleep on the left to avoid stillbirth.”

 Really? 

So anyone like myself who thrashes around in their sleep and commonly ends up flat on their back mouth open catching flies has already started on the road to poor parenting by endangering their unborn child.

 I read on and discovered that this survey was conducted on more than 450 women.  Instantly I was reassured that this ‘new research’ must be correct if it had been conducted on 450 women…

 I remember pregnancy as being an anxious time; to be growing something so precious and not being able to see it develop in front of you was challenging to say the least.  Many a night would be spent (on my back) hands caressing the outline of my unborn child whilst I waited for a reassuring kick or wiggle to confirm all was happy inside.

 Research based on 450 people is insufficient and this type of article only perpetuates the fears of pregnant ladies who swing to the right; and for anyone who has had suffering the heartbreaking loss of a child I don’t see how this article adds value. 

Am I over reacting?  I must confess I didn’t wake up with a smile painted on today so maybe I am just taking it out on the so called news….

ITS THE FINAL WEEK TO VOTE

**My little blog has been shortlisted in the MAD blog Awards; I am really flattered, if you want to help me win please click on this voting link and enter your name and email and my blog has been shortlisted in Best Mad Blog about Family life (the first one); just click ‘northern mum’   – Thanks from me, twin boy, twin girl, BB, and he who helped create them x x x

 

28 thoughts on “Newsworthy…… I think not…..”

  1. Stupid scaremongering. Can you believe they Pay people to do this kind of research? I think they’ve run out studies like “what percentage of our pavements have chewing gum stuck to the floor”

  3. I read something similar to this when I was pregnant with F and spent the last 5 months of pregnancy sleeping on my left side. I ended up with a very sore shoulder and hip…but strangely, I still sleep on this side now.

    I think articles like this are fine if they are balanced and include comment from experts putting another view across. It’s about giving women the information to make an informed choice. But if not all the information is given and it’s put under a headline that screams “SCARY STUFF – READ ME!” then I don’t think that’s doing the journalist, paper or readers a favour.

  4. I had the same reaction as you when Husband read this out to me. I start the night on my right-hand side and wake on my back, so it really is amazing, according to this survey, that Baby O survived… Hmmmm… Yet another thing for pregnant women to worry about. Maybe they should do a survey on how survey- related stress affects people?!

  5. The Guardian has a more balanced article on the research; the Metro is the Daily Mail’s little brother, after all, so you can expect a bit of scare-mongering there. 450 people could be enough to provide preliminary results, and it’s published in a well-repected journal, so I’m inclined to believe that the statistics and methodology are OK, if not perfect. (In any case, the authors’ main conclusion is that larger, better studies should be done.) Innards are not symmetrical, so this could make sense physiologically, eg the baby and uterus putting pressure on blood vessels on one side of the body but not the other, and restricting blood flow to the placenta.

    The issue is really with the reporting, rather than the research. In the article, the authors are very clear that they found an association between sleep position and late stillbirth, and don’t make any claims about causation, which is quite a different animal. Humans are hard-wired to infer causation from association (often spuriously), but the papers don’t exactly do a great job of emphasizing the difference. Another thing which is poorly understood, and often misrepresented in the search for a good headline, is relative risk. If the chance of being hit by a meteorite changes from one-in-a-million to two-in-a-million, your risk has doubled, but it’s unlikely that the change would see you cowering inside the house. A quote from the study: “As the absolute risk of late stillbirth for an individual pregnant woman in a high income country is low (3.09/1000 in our study population), for women who did not sleep on the left side the increased risk would still be small in absolute terms (about 3.93/100)”.

  7. It’s amazing the stuff that gets published.

    I slept on my back as Lyra was a very wriggly baby at night and kept me awake all night unless I slept on my back and allowed Lulu – my fattest cat – sleep on my belly. They Lyra calmed down. I assume the loud purring was soothing?

    I’m sure I was endangering her health horribly, but at least I got a little sleep!

  8. Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that women who read the metro are more likely to use bins as newspaper storage mechanisms. Even women who religiously sleep on their left and follow the government’s wildly oscillating pregnancy/drink guidelines.
    ~M

  9. Ah the lovely morning commute interrupted by teeth gnashing headlines – such a good start to the day. All I can say is I spent my first pregnancy propped upright to sleep the only comfy position, with twins second time round I slept on my sides (left and right) all survived so no harm to them. I just wish society would just leave pregnant women alone to get on with being pregnant without the scarmongering thats so common. Its hard enough with raging hormones to cope with growing a baby inside you

  11. I slept on my stomach through my pregnancy which is meant to be a total no no and my baby is healthy as hell. I don’t really read these scare stories. Just do what comes naturally ya know!

  12. What a horrid thing for a paper to publish

    We had awful problems with my pregnancy with Littler and I was put on bedrest with strict instructions to lie on my left side for four and a bit months or until the baby arrived – and yes I did because for babies that have issues lying on your left side improves blood flow and being on bed rest facing her dying every day I’ve had chewed off an arm if I thought it would have improved the odds

    BUT the human race hasn’t died out over the last x thousand years because women haven’t been trained to lie on their left side – you’ll wake up if you need to if you impeding blood flow because it’ll be bad for you and for the baby so your body will shout

    Yet another piece of rubbish written to create noise without thinking through the consequences

    • Thanks Hannah,

      I think you have made some really good points; advice like this works when medical intervention is needed in some way but as a headline in a paper, it is just scaremongering.

      Jane x

  13. I don’t think you’re overreacting at all.

    I slept on my tummy for a s long as possible. The babies didn’t come out looking squashed at all. Though that could be due to the sections…

    In all seriousness, whatever sleep a pregnant woman can catch, is good for her and good for her baby.

Comments are closed.