A baby's health may be hurt by a mother's sleep apnea

This article explains how sleep apnea during pregnancy may hurt a baby's health

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.

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