Infant sleep and feeding patterns are associated with maternal sleep, stress, and depressed mood in women with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD)

Aug 1, 2015Archives of women's mental health

Infant sleep and feeding patterns linked to mothers’ sleep, stress, and mood in women with past major depression

AI simplified

Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

Associations between maternal sleep and infant sleep patterns were observed at postpartum week 2.

Shorter duration of the longest infant-sleep bout was associated with shorter maternal sleep duration and lower sleep efficiency.
Maternal sleep efficiency was negatively associated with both the number of infant-sleep bouts and the duration of infant feeding.
No associations were found between infant sleep or feeding and maternal sleep at 6 or 16 weeks postpartum.
More disturbed infant sleep and more frequent feeding at 6 weeks were linked to higher maternal depressive symptoms and stress ratings at 6 and 16 weeks.
The data suggest that interventions aimed at improving maternal sleep and mood should consider both maternal and infant sleep patterns.

AI simplified

Our goal was to examine associations of infant sleep and feeding patterns with maternal sleep and mood among women at risk for postpartum depression. Participants were 30 women (age ± SD = 28.3 ± 5.1 years) with a history of MDD (but not in a mood episode at enrollment) who completed daily sleep diaries, wore wrist actigraphs to estimate sleep, and had their mood assessed with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D-17) during four separate weeks of the perinatal period (33 weeks pregnancy and weeks 2, 6, and 16 postpartum). They logged their infants' sleep and feeding behaviors daily and reported postnatal stress on the Childcare Stress Inventory (CSI) at week 16. Mothers' actigraphically estimated sleep showed associations with infant sleep and feeding patterns only at postpartum week 2. Shorter duration of the longest infant-sleep bout was associated with shorter maternal sleep duration (p = .02) and lower sleep efficiency (p = .04), and maternal sleep efficiency was negatively associated with the number of infant-sleep bouts (p = .008) and duration of infant feeding (p = .008). Neither infant sleep nor feeding was associated with maternal sleep at 6 or 16 weeks, but more disturbed infant sleep and more frequent feeding at 6 weeks were associated with higher HAM-D scores at 6 and 16 weeks and higher CSI scores. Sleep in the mother-infant dyad is most tightly linked in the early postpartum weeks, but mothers continue to experience disturbed sleep and infant sleep and feeding behaviors continue to be associated with mothers' depressive symptoms and stress ratings as long as 16 weeks postpartum. These data imply that interventions designed to improve maternal sleep and postpartum mood should include both mothers and infants because improving infant sleep alone is not likely to improve maternal sleep, and poor infant sleep is linked to postpartum depression and stress.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (PDF) ↗View full text (HTML) ↗View full text ↗

Infant sleep and feeding patterns are associated with maternal sleep, stress, and depressed mood in women with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD)

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief