RNS: Sleep/Infants
Time: 3:24
URL: http://www.med.umich.edu/podcast/MiResearch/2008/depressedbabies.mp3
Mom’s mood, baby’s sleep: what’s the connection?
U-M sleep researcher advises parents of newborns – especially moms with depression – about the importance of getting baby’s sleep patterns set
(Radio News Service suggested lead-in: What’s the connection between a new mother’s mood and the way her new baby sleeps? University of Michigan researchers who study sleep and depression are trying to find out.)
If there’s one thing that everyone knows about newborn babies, it’s that they don’t sleep through the night, and neither do their parents.
But in fact, those first six months of life are crucial to developing the regular sleeping and waking patterns, known as circadian rhythms, that a child will need for a healthy future.
Some children may start life with the sleep odds stacked against them, though. According to University of Michigan sleep experts who have been conducting research on the issue, babies born to mothers who have depression are more likely to have problems sleeping right from the start, and that can set them up for problems down the road.
Dr. Roseanne Armitage heads the team that is studying this issue, and other issues related to how sleep affects mood:
Our research at the University of Michigan has really focused on the role of sleep in major depressive disorders and trying to understand how developmental changes in the brain and sleep and circadian rhythms might contribute to risk for depression. And from our earlier research we noted that there was good evidence that sleep and circadian rhythms were abnormal even in very young children with depression, well before puberty.
Since depression tends to run in families, Dr Armitage and her colleagues decided to take the next step and study sleep patterns in babies born to women who had depression, and compare them to babies born to non-depressed moms.
Fascinatingly, there were many more sleep episodes in the high risk infants; in other words they were napping way more than the low risk infants, and when they tried to settle at night for their night time sleep episode it took them more than 2 hours to settle down at night compared to the low risk infants. They woke up more during the night and they also had many more daytime naps that were shorter duration. So sleep was not as consolidated, it was very disrupted in both day and night and the amplitude or strength of their circadian rhythm was really damped compared to the low risk infants. And that was already evident at 2 weeks and continued out to 30 weeks.
This may mean that new moms who have experienced depression during pregnancy or in the past should pay close attention to their baby’s sleep patterns. But actually, every new parent can take steps to make sure their baby gets on the right track for healthy sleep, says Dr. Armitage.
Keeping a very regular sleep cycle is incredibly important; we know that for both children and adults and we also, from this study with the high and low risk infants, know that the more stable the bedtime the less chaotic sleep is during the night. So going to bed at the same time, getting up at the same time, establishing rituals about the bedtime so that infants begin to distinguish between night sleep and day sleep. Put the baby in day clothes for naps, put the baby in nightclothes for night sleep and babies pick up cues around them.
The researchers will present some of their new data at an international sleep meeting in Scotland this month. For more information on children and sleep, including healthy sleep tips for kids, visit the National Sleep Foundation at www.sleepfoundation.org.
Kara Gavin, University of Michigan Health System news
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