Ten Reasons to use the PrenaBelt®

Unlike the PrenaBelt®, pregnancy pillows are not clinically tested and, therefore, their effectiveness at minimizing time spent sleeping on the back in late pregnancy is unknown. This also holds true for regular pillows and all of our competitors (except for one that claims clinical testing has been completed but has not published any results). When it comes to the health of a pregnancy, it is critical that any products a person uses are clinically tested in multiple settings by multiple investigators and that the results are published in international medical journals with a rigorous peer-review process. After over a decade of painstaking work, the PrenaBelt® is the only device that meets this criteria.

This means that it focuses on what matters most: the position of the pelvis and lower back. One of the most important factors affecting blood flow within a pregnant person and to the developing baby is the position of the person’s pelvis and lower back because this is the place where her major blood vessels can be compressed by the enlarged uterus. This is the major flaw of all our competitors, which make the mistake of focusing on the position of the chest or by forcing the entire body to be in the same position as the pelvis and lower back. By ignoring the position of the pelvis and lower back, competitor products may be ineffective and make the user more uncomfortable, which further disturbs their sleep.

As previously noted, the blood flow within one's body and to one's uterus, placenta, and developing baby, is dependent on the position of the pelvis and lower back. By focusing on what matters most, the position of the pelvis and lower back, the PrenaBelt® offers more freedom, comfort, and support while sleeping. Also, who would have thought that one needed support while sleeping?! Most people only wear maternity support belts during the day; however, research has clearly implicated turning over in bed at night as one of two activities that consistently triggers low back pain from 5-7 months until the end of pregnancy.[1] Further, when flat on the back in the third trimester of pregnancy, compression of a major blood vessel (the "inferior vena cava") by the enlarged uterus can result in congestion of tiny blood vessels that drain important structures in the lower spinal cord, which is thought to provoke a nerve-based "achy" pain.[2-4] We were surprised when some of our PrenaBelt® beta testers raved about reduced pain during the night with the PrenaBelt®, but now it makes perfect sense!

References:

1. Morino S, et al. Low back pain and causative movements in pregnancy: a prospective cohort study. BMC Musculoskelet Disord, 2017
2. Paksoy Y, Gormus N. Epidural venous plexus enlargements presenting with radiculopathy and back pain in patients with inferior vena cava obstruction or occlusion. Spine, 2004
3. Fast A, et al. Night backache in pregnancy. Hypothetical pathophysiological mechanisms. Am J Phys Med Rehabil, 1989.
4. Fast A, Hertz G. Nocturnal low back pain in pregnancy: polysomnographic correlates. Am J Reprod Immunol, 1992.

The PrenaBelt® is passive, not active. This means that it does not wake you from sleep. By capitalizing on humans' highly sophisticated and natural mechanism to avoid pressure points during sleep, the PrenaBelt® Luna is natural and does not impact sleep quality or quantity.[1,2] The other PrenaBelt® attachments altogether prevent, in a passive manner, the user's pelvis and low back from ending up in positions with suboptimal blood flow. Active positional therapy devices are not so. For example, one of our competitors uses vibration to alert the user she is on her back, which rudely awakes her from sleep; however, a recent meta-analysis [3] emphasized the need for more research into the deleterious effects of using vibrational stimulation during sleep,[4,5] which has been shown to increase blood pressure.[6] 

References:

1. Kember AJ, et al. Modifying maternal sleep position in the third trimester of pregnancy with positional therapy: a randomised pilot trial. BMJ Open, 2018.
2. Warland J, et al. Modifying Maternal Sleep Position in Late Pregnancy Through Positional Therapy: A Feasibility Study. J Clin Sleep Med, 2018.
3. Ravesloot MJL, et al. Efficacy of the new generation of devices for positional therapy for patients with positional obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review of the literature and meta-Analysis. J Clin Sleep Med, 2017.
4. Arnberg PW, Bennerhult O, Eberhardt JL. Sleep disturbances caused by vibrations from heavy road traffic. Cit J Acoust Soc Am, 1990.
5. Smith MG, et al. Physiological effects of railway vibration and noise on sleep. J Acoust Soc Am, 2017.
6. Davies RJO, et al. Arterial blood pressure responses to graded transient arousal from sleep in normal humans. J Appl Physiol,1993.

The PrenaBelt® provides more than just positional therapy during sleep in late pregnancy — it also provides musculoskeletal support and thermal therapy to the lower back and buttocks for aches and pains in pregnancy. The PrenaBelt® can also be used for support after pregnancy — even if you’ve had a c-section.

Regular pillows can be compressed flat or shift during the night. Regular pillows may sometimes end up on the other side of the bed or on the floor without the user knowing. The PrenaBelt® solves this problem by staying on all night long and attaching a special pillow to the user, per se. Further, in late pregnancy, bathroom visits are common during the night. When returning to bed after using the bathroom, one must grope around in the dark to reconfigure her pillows to ensure she is positioned on them correctly, and by the time she does this, she is wide awake and may struggle to fall asleep again. Because the PrenaBelt® stays on all night long, it does not require adjustment or reconfiguration upon returning to bed. 

Unlike pregnancy pillows, the PrenaBelt® permits intimacy, does not overheat, and does not take up a lot of space in the bed or in storage. Users can take the PrenaBelt® on their next road trip! Users can snuggle with their partner without having 20 pounds of pillow and 20 inches of separation in between! Pregnancy pillows are giant heat sinks, and once the user's body heat warms them up, they may find it more difficult to stay cool. When pregnancy is completed, users of the PrenaBelt® don’t need to worry about finding a space the size of a small couch to store the PrenaBelt®, and they can pack it away in the same box it arrived in!

The PrenaBelt® was created as a collaboration between hundreds of patients and dozens of healthcare professionals including physicians, nurses, midwives, and biomedical engineers. Since 2013, the PrenaBelt® design has undergone several rounds improvement based on the feedback we received from our users.

We are pioneers in sleep-in-pregnancy research. The team behind the PrenaBelt®  was the first team in the world to complete interventional trials of positional therapy for sleep in late pregnancy.[1-4] Our team and collaborators have published extensively on sleeping position in pregnancy - so much that, pardon our self-promotion, our competitors don't bother to do their own research and, if they do cite any research, they just cite ours instead!

References:

1. Kember AJ, et al. Modifying maternal sleep position in the third trimester of pregnancy with positional therapy: a randomised pilot trial. BMJ Open, 2018.
2. Warland J, et al. Modifying Maternal Sleep Position in Late Pregnancy Through Positional Therapy: A Feasibility Study. J Clin Sleep Med, 2018.
3. Coleman J, et al. The Ghana PrenaBelt trial: a double-blind, sham-controlled, randomised clinical trial to evaluate the effect of maternal positional therapy during third-trimester sleep on birth weight. BMJ Open, 2019.
4. Coleman J, et al. Maternal positional therapy for fetal growth and customised birth weight centile benefit in a Bayesian reanalysis of a double-blind, sham-controlled, randomised clinical trial. BMJ Open, 2024.

When a person purchases the PrenaBelt®, they are supporting the stillbirth cause and helping to eliminate these preventable tragedies in Canada and around the world. We will donate a portion of every PrenaBelt® purchase to advance stillbirth research, prevention, and advocacy.