Pillow Talk: The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy Pillows

It’s often a challenge, but getting a good night’s sleep while pregnant is incredibly important. In fact, researchers have found that good sleep while pregnant reduces the risk of birth complications when the time comes for baby to enter the world, and it’s also crucial for your own mental health as an expecting mother. Those reasons alone are enough to convince us!

Lucky for today’s pregnant woman, there are lots of products on the market to encourage restful sleep, even with an ever-growing tummy. As indicated by the increasingly large selection of pregnancy pillows, women and entrepreneurs have banded together to create a solution for any kind of sleeper — and we at Tummy Cradle have done our part by laying out the options for you!

For Stomach Sleepers

Best Pillow Type: Inflatable Pillow

We truly feel for stomach sleepers — it’s impossible to continue sleeping on your tummy from pretty much the moment it starts growing. But that doesn’t mean you don’t crave that feeling of suspended weightlessness, especially after spending all day standing with a compressed spine.

For a long time, pillows made to accommodate a pregnant belly were only something professional massage therapists could afford. Now, however, inflatable pillows like Tummy Cradle have made it not only affordable, but easy and adjustable. With ventilated openings for stomach, breasts and face, Tummy Cradle is comfy for every curve of the body at any stage of the pregnancy.

Although we know it’s not the same as your own bed, a good inflatable pillow can be a perfect place to relax, nap and maybe get some other things done, too.

Tummy Cradle is also the only pregnancy pillow to decompress a tired spine and alleviate back pain caused by pregnancy.

For Side Sleepers

Best Pillow Type: C-Shaped, Full-Body Pillow or a Wedge Pillow

Side sleepers may have it the easiest out of us all, even though it probably doesn’t feel like it. As a pregnant tummy grows larger, a side sleeper feels its effect in just a few ways: perhaps it’s that you can’t quite bend your legs as close to your stomach as you could before or, later in pregnancy, the weight of tummy is pulling you downwards and straining your back.

Either way, we have a couple pieces of good news for you side sleepers. First, sleeping on your side is not only the healthiest way for you to sleep, but it’s also the healthiest for your baby in terms of blood and nutrient flow, especially if you can train yourself to sleep on your left side. Second, you can save yourself money by simply putting a pillow in between your legs — mommas from all generations can attest to the success of this simple solution.

If the pillow-in-between-your-legs trick just isn’t cutting it, though, we recommend checking out a c-shaped, full-body pillow like the Leachco Snoogle Total Body Pillow. For something even less intrusive, a simple maternity wedge pillow will take some stress off your back and help you sleep through the night.

For Back Sleepers

Best Pillow Type: U-Shaped, Full-Body Pillow

Early in pregnancy, sleeping on your back is relatively achievable — even if you have a little bit of a tummy, it’s not usually uncomfortable to continue sleeping the way you’re used to. As your belly gets bigger, though, we have some bad news: it’s best to train yourself to sleep on your side. Past 20 weeks, sleeping with the weight of your abdomen on top can restrict blood flow to your baby and leave you nauseous and dizzy.  

The upside? There’s a pillow for that. It’s not quite the same as sleeping on your back, but a u-shaped, full-body pillow is a great alternative because it provides equal pressure on the back as on the tummy. We recommend checking out the Leachco Back ‘N Belly, which not only provides support while you’re laying down, but is also great for sitting up and relaxing on your back like the good ol’ days.

U-Shaped are a little expensive and take up a lot of space in bed, but their capacity for lounging also makes them a versatile product post-baby, especially while nursing.

Other Considerations:

Removable Cover, Pillow Filling, Hypoallergenic Materials

Another important feature of a pregnancy pillow that you will grow to love as you use it is a removable cover. Pregnancy is hot and often sweaty, and a washable cover in order to keep your pregnancy pillow hygienic and comfortable. Be sure to consider the breathability of the fabric, as well as how easy it is to get the cover on and off.

Pregnancy pillows come with several different types of filling, including styrofoam, polyester fiber, micro-bead and memory foam. While polyester fiber may be a popular filling for pillows, it’s also not as firm or breathable as memory foam, which manufacturers often shred to make it less hot — but memory foam is also heavy and sometimes challenging to carry around. Inflatable pillows like Tummy Cradle are not only easy to carry, but also easy to clean … but everything, including whether a pillow is particularly hypoallergenic or not, depends on what suits you and your pregnant belly best!