After weeks of researching body pillows to aid in my scoliosis and breathing problems, I decided to try a pregnancy pillow. These pillows in general have good reviews for people with back problems and I figured why not. I’ve always slept with a pillow(s) for pain management. I carefully selected this pillow after watching and reading dozens of product descriptions/videos and landing on this brand, comparing their entire catalog, and feeling this pillow was the best option. When I got the pillow and laid in it for the test dive, I thought it was going to be incredible. It was like I was being cradled both on my back and on my side. It was perfect. Literally that night though I spent 30 minutes trying to get comfortable in it to sleep and haven’t had a good night’s sleep since. I bought the “Leachco Back 'N Belly Bliss Pregnancy/Maternity Body Pillow with 100% Sateen Cotton, 300 Thread Count Zippered Cover in Lightly Latte” and I believe 50% of the problems are due to the material. It appears it is now an Amazon Choice product, though, so my review will likely be blocked/deleted and I will be blocked from reviewing this pillow. 1. Do not misunderstand when people say it’s ‘huge’ and do not trust the measurements. The measurements are not use measurements, they’re product measurements. They mean it’s fat, wide, bulky. They do not mean it’s long. I am 5’3, this pillow is absolutely tiny and it’s one of the ‘longest’ ones I’ve found. The actual, shoulder-down, BODY length and support measurement is barely 40 inches when in the symmetrical standard product shape. AND to get more length it creates a nightmare described in 2. It barely reaches my knees. Mirroring it, which is mentioned in hundreds of reviews, is NOT A FIX OR SOLUTION because it is literally the same length but instead I lose it from my elbows up and have no arm support. In a TIGHT fetal position, something impossible to do while pregnant even, my feet STILL aren’t supported. Their models must be 4ft. 2. It is not the flexy-solution I had imagined. I bought this model because it was advertised as ‘perfectly adjustable’ to be any length and bend along it anywhere to make the perfect shape and be used as a head and body pillow. Fact is, if you bend it, it will sharply crease and becomes extremely uncomfortable. It shifts constantly to become overstuffed and unmanageable in the creases. It comes with a velcro pad to stick the bottom of the two sides together and that’s obviously how they want you to use it but it’s not made to facilitate even that shape. The stuffing will walk its way to the middle in under an hour of use even if I manage to strangle and beat the crap out of it enough to spread it out to the feet. If you bend it, it will fight you. It will run away from your head, it will straighten out under your leg, if you do not velcro it the part on your back will slowly slide off the bed or into the center. If you try to bend it under your knees a) you can’t because it’s not long enough but if you move it to a weird [ shape the stuffing like instantly retreats and it provides zero support. Flipping it upside down does not help and somehow the ‘crease’ rule does not apply and the stuffing disappears. It twists and turns and loses support width as well as stuffing. I sleep with my own set of blankets and tuck them under the side and this pillow will break all obstacles between it and being flung open into a wide V shape. 3. The material is atrocious. It’s ‘sateen’ and feels like sleeping with a pee protector. It is INSANELY hot. Like it is UNREASONABLY hot. It’s like it absorbs and intensifies and then blasts my body heat back at me. It is totally not breathable and it also apparently absorbs air. I sleep with my head under the covers. Again, always had body pillows, dozens of different styles and materials and always slept this way (and I’ve had sateen sheets before!)…I wake up like suffocating next to this pillow. That has never happened before at this rate and intensity. It even happens when I sleep on my back atop the 30 inch freaking loft half sitting up position. Also, somehow, every night I wake up with my face somehow rubbing on the dang zipper. I think I fight with the pillow in my sleep and it somehow ends up zipper-up. Even if I didn’t have facial piercings that would be terrible. 4. The support is all wrong. So it looks wide, it looks fat, like the arms, right? Okay, so what we’re looking for in a body pillow is like when we throw our bent leg over our partner, right? That wide, stable support. What you get here is like if instead your partner gave you their little chicken shins. It is not wide and supportive to the full leg and foot. Either your knee completely goes down to the bed to get your foot on there, causing painful hip and back twisting or your shin to foot is dangling. In one of the videos they show a woman in the fetal position and her foot is like reaching for the other arm of the pillow. Yeah, except that doesn’t freaking work. You have two options, tight fetal or sitting up and you’ll need at least another pillow either way and preferably a wall, too. To smash into to keep the stuffing all on the arm your leg is on. 5. It causes more pain that it alleviates. Every single time I have slept with this I have woken up about every hour to a different limb having fallen asleep. I barely slept 4 hours last night, I just couldn’t fight it anymore and got up. I have woken up desperately searching for support as my back and hips and knee ache. I have woken up unable to breathe, with a zipper scratching at my eye or pulling jewelry, sweating, completely off the pillow between two flung out arms with my head on the mattress. My neck always hurts but since I got this pillow, turning my head to the left has become incredibly difficult. Overall, I just can not recommend this pillow or any from this brand as they all appear about the same. I barely made it 5 days before giving up. Maybe someone else will like it, plenty of reviews do. But I just can not handle this pillow. I can’t imagine I would have liked it when I was pregnant, either. I will return to a long regular body pillow.
