Snoring During Pregnancy May Harm Your Baby’s Health

Notes from Dr. Norman Blumenstock:
Pregnant women who snore, can increase their risk of pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure.

By Eric Cohen, MD

Published Mar 12, 2014

For a lot of us, snoring is simply a part of life.  But while millions deal with and have learned to live with snoring, it could have a significant impact on expectant mothers. Scientists have looked into how snoring can affect a woman during pregnancy, but a recent study showed that snoring can also affect an unborn child.

Snoring can sometimes be attributed to a sleep disorder known  as sleep apnea, which causes one to momentarily stop breathing while asleep. This can happen a few times a night or, in more severe cases, up to hundreds of times, causing the amount of oxygen in the blood to decrease. Untreated sleep apnea can lead to other health problems, and in pregnant women, can increase the risk of pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why doctors would be concerned about an infant’s health if its mother was snoring during pregnancy and had a sleep disorder. To find out just what these snoring risks were, the scientists who conducted the new study followed more than 1,600 mothers during their pregnancies; one-third of the pregnant women studied were regular snorers. Among the snorers, quite a number had cesarean deliveries; not only that, many were emergency C-sections. Another trend noticed among the mothers who snored was that their newborns weighed less than average. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but smaller infants have been found to be more prone to certain medical conditions.

Now that this new information has come to light, doctors can prepare accordingly. Screening expectant mothers for disorders such as sleep apnea is clearly essential. Checking breathing and oxygen levels are steps that can be taken early on in a woman’s pregnancy to find the cause of her snoring and perhaps even eliminate it. In the case of sleep apnea, there are treatments that can also help patients rest better and maintain proper oxygen levels, leading to better quality of life for mom and baby.

Snoring warning for mothers-to-be

Thursday, October 31, 2013 - 07:03 PM

Mothers-to-be who snore are more likely to give birth to smaller babies, a study has found.

Snoring during pregnancy was also linked to higher rates of Caesarean delivery.

Experts said snoring may be a sign of breathing problems that could deprive an unborn baby of oxygen.

Previous research has already shown that women who start to snore during pregnancy are at risk from high blood pressure and the potentially dangerous pregnancy condition pre-eclampsia.

More than a third of the 1,673 pregnant women recruited for the new US study reported habitual snoring.

Scientists found that women who snored in their sleep three or more nights per week had a higher risk of poor delivery outcomes, including smaller babies and Caesarean births.

Chronic snorers, who snored both before and during pregnancy, were two thirds more likely to have a baby whose weight was in the bottom 10%.

They were also more than twice as likely to need an elective Caesarean delivery, or C-section, compared with non-snorers.

Dr Louise O’Brien, from the University of Michigan’s Sleep Disorders Centre, said: “There has been great interest in the implications of snoring during pregnancy and how it affects maternal health but there is little data on how it may impact the health of the baby.

“We’ve found that chronic snoring is associated with both smaller babies and C-sections, even after we accounted for other risk factors. This suggests that we have a window of opportunity to screen pregnant women for breathing problems during sleep that may put them at risk of poor delivery outcomes.”

Women who snored both before and during pregnancy were more likely to have smaller babies and elective C-sections, the researches found. Those who started snoring only during pregnancy had a higher risk of both elective and emergency Caesareans, but not of smaller babies.

Snoring is a key sign of obstructive sleep apnoea, which results in the airway becoming partially blocked, said the researchers, whose findings appear in the journal Sleep.

This can reduce blood oxygen levels during the night and is associated with serious health problems, including high blood pressure and heart attacks.

Sleep apnoea can be treated with CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), which involves wearing a machine during sleep to keep the airways open.

Dr O’Brien added: “If we can identify risks during pregnancy that can be treated, such as obstructive sleep apnoea, we can reduce the incidence of small babies, C-sections and possibly NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit) admission that not only improve long-term health benefits for newborns but also help keep costs down.”

For the health of the pregnant mom and unborn, it's essential that obstructive sleep apnea is ruled out.

Why Pregnancy Snoring Matters

By Stacey Whitman

About as glamorous as stretch marks and swollen ankles, pregnancy snoring is surprisingly common and may be far more serious than simply disturbing a bedmate.

That’s because expectant moms who acquire a pregnancy snoring habit are twice as likely to develop high blood pressure or preeclampsia, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Preeclampsia is a very dangerous condition that—if left untreated—could be fatal to mother and baby.

Lead researcher Louise O’Brien says pregnant women (particularly those with high blood pressure) who experience loud snoring three nights a week or more should be screened for obstructive sleep apnea or gestational diabetes, two more serious causes of pregnancy snoring. If pregnancy snoring has become a problem for you, talk to your OB/GYN. In the meantime, there are a few ways that might help you find sweet sleep relief:

Pregnancy snoring remedies

• Apply a nasal strip before bed. It opens your nasal passageways, making pregnancy snoring less likely.
• Run a warm-mist humidifier in your bedroom. It helps keep your throat and mouth from getting dry, which is a common cause of pregnancy snoring.
• Use an extra pillow. It’ll keep your head elevated, which can stop your throat and tongue from sagging.
• Keep pregnancy weight gain in check. Too many extra pounds can increase the likelihood of pregnancy snoring.