576
Views
19
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Maternal subjective sleep quality and nighttime infant care

, , , , &
Pages 384-391 | Received 05 Sep 2009, Accepted 23 Jan 2010, Published online: 13 Oct 2010
 

Abstract

The current study explored the relationship between maternal subjective sleep quality and two factors that have been independently linked to maternal sleep: infant caretaking at night and maternal depressive symptom severity. Participants were a follow‐up cohort of 94 women (mean age 33.3, SD=4.4), who were depressed during pregnancy and part of a larger randomised controlled trial. Participants were evaluated 10 weeks after delivery, using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and daily sleep logs for one week. On average, women woke to attend to the infant 2.2 times (SD=1.1) and spent 47.3 min (SD=33.0) awake to attend to the infant. Regression analysis revealed that the number of times a woman’s sleep was disrupted by attending to her infant was a significant predictor of her perceived subjective sleep quality; however, the total amount of time she spent attending to her infant and her depressive symptom severity were not predictors. The findings of this study suggest that during the third postpartum month, sleep fragmentation appears more detrimental to maternal subjective sleep quality than amount of time awake during the night. This finding is relevant to the implementation of clinical interventions for improving maternal subjective sleep quality during the early postpartum period.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Agency for Health Research and Quality Grant award number HS09988. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has provided a data safety and monitoring board for this study.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 515.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.