Purflo breathe pregnancy pillow review: A firm favourite that offers brilliant back support

Having a baby often comes with a lot of stuff. That is, buying the bits and pieces that you think you might need ahead of your arrival date. While some of it is more useful than others, one product that is generally indispensable to a pregnant person is a good pregnancy pillow. Whether to ease pelvic girdle pain, or take some weight off a burgeoning bump, a soft but supportive pillow is a must-have once a pregnancy advances into the second and third trimester.

Launching its first product in 1996, Purflo calls itself the UK’s “original baby safe sleep brand.” The company was launched by concerned new parents who wanted to create cleaner, safer and healthier sleeping environments for babies. Today, Purflo is still driven by its founding principles of safe sleep.

The brand’s entire range of mattresses, pillows, sleep bags and thermometers are designed by safe sleep baby product experts using hypoallergenic materials, follow safe sleep guidelines and have often undergone extensive consumer research.

To see what all the fuss is about, we tried out the Purflo breathe pregnancy pillow in its botanical design – also available in a minimal grey colourway – to see if it could ease our aches and pains and truly aid us in attempts to have a good night’s sleep.

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We reviewed this pillow for several weeks throughout our third trimester of pregnancy for left-sided night sleeping, and then continued to test as a feeding pillow once the baby had arrived for exclusive breastfeeding throughout the day and night. We also tried it as a tummy time support, too.

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The Purflo breathe pregnancy pillow features an ergonomic ‘C’ shaped design, and aims to provide complete support and comfort for a more restful night’s sleep during pregnancy.

Rather than a traditional sausage-shaped pillow, the Purflo breathe features a “3D spacer mesh” panel right in the middle. The spacer mesh provides full breathability around the bump area and has ultra soft jersey cotton interlock throughout.

Read more: 9 best pregnancy pillows that provide support

The pillow arrived rolled in a compact, zipped package with a handle, allowing easy storage and transportation. As far as aesthetics goes, the floral design was a nice touch and the pillow was a pleasure to look at, or leave on the bed or sofa, without feeling like it was too much of a bulky eyesore.

At odds to what you’d expect when you think of a pillow for comfort, this one is actually quite firm. Far from being awkward and unyielding though, there was just enough give in it to support us well, while also being a soft relief for our tired limbs.

When used as a back support cushion (which we thought was the best use for it, overall), we found that the ergonomic design followed the natural contours of our back. The pillow is big enough to support the body from neck to knees when lying down at night, but not so large that it takes up too much space in the bed or that it’s difficult to move when changing positions.

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We used it in a king-sized bed with a 6ft partner and neither of us were disturbed by having the pillow in bed with us too. The firmness of the pillow meant that it was quite difficult to support our bump and we required an extra, softer pillow at night for this.

As a breastfeeding support, we found it worked well if the pillow was ‘worn’ backwards, i.e. with the central mesh to our stomachs and the baby laid on top. The packaging also states that the pillow can be used for tummy time, but we found that the firmness and the height of the pillow was unsuitable for our very young baby at the time of testing, although it could be useful for this purpose in the coming months.

For evenings on the sofa to avoid sinking into uneven support, this pillow is excellent. Its firmness is a credit and something we preferred over much softer contenders. Importantly, it kept our knees apart and aligned when lying down at night for an optimum sleeping position.

The downside of the firmness is that the pillow is less malleable and adjustable to very personal preferences. However, if you’re looking for a robust support pillow which keeps a soft, elegant charm, you’ll find the Purflo breathe will likely work for you.