Sleep practices and association between supine sleep position and stillbirth in a rural sample of pregnant women in Bangladesh.

OBJECTIVE

To describe maternal sleep practices and assess the association between maternal supine sleep position and stillbirth.

METHODS

The study was a secondary analysis of the control arm of a community-based cluster randomised controlled trial conducted in the Sherpur district of Bangladesh. A maternal sleep position questionnaire was prospectively administered to participants between May 2021 and November 2021. Pregnancy outcomes were collected by the field staff within 10 days of birth for participants. Multivariate Poisson regression model was used to evaluate the association between stillbirth and supine falling-to-sleep position, reporting both the relative risk (RR), adjusted relative risk (aRR) with 95 % confidence intervals.

RESULTS

We included 799 births of the participating and eligible control women. A lateral sleep position was reported by 95.1 % of women, 4.8 % reported a supine sleep position. There were 19 stillbirths, a rate of 24 per 1000 births. Sharing the bed with others, ease of sleeping and level of comfort were not found to be associated with sleep position. There was no association between supine falling-to-sleep position and stillbirth (aRR 2.07, 95 % CI 0.59-7.28).

CONCLUSION

The study did not identify an association between supine sleep position and stillbirth, which may be due to both the low prevalence of stillbirth as an outcome of research, and the low frequency of supine sleep position. This is the largest study within a low-and-middle income country to assess sleep practices and sleep environment in pregnancy.