Essential
- Between the 2nd and 7th post-partum week, the daily duration of the sleep of young mothers increased to 6.7 hours.
- On the other hand, the daily duration of uninterrupted sleep remained low, more precisely at 3.2 hours.
- The results identify the discontinuity of sleep as a potential risk factor and an intervention target for postpartum depression and other health problems related to postpartum.
“Maternal sleep is disrupted during the postpartum period, but the nature and gravity of the sleep disturbance was not sufficiently documented. Research on the duration of sleep has only reported a modest sleep loss beyond the first week following childbirth, which means that women who give birth for the first time are badly prepared for the type of sleep disturbance to which they should expect” According to researchers from the University of the State of Washington (United States). Thus, in a recent study, they wanted to analyze the sleep of young mothers during the first 13 weeks of postpartum.
The total sleep duration gradually returns to its level before pregnancy
To carry out the work, published in the review Sleepthe team recruited 41 women, aged 26 to 43, who became mothers for the first time. They provided the sleep data for their portable devices for an entire year before childbirth and until the end of the first year following the birth of their child. Sleep information was analyzed by 5 -minute slices, using consecutive sleep and watch periods of more than 10 minutes as criteria for the start and outline of sleep periods.
The results showed that the average duration of daily sleep of young mothers was 4.4 hours during the first week following childbirth, against 7.8 hours before pregnancy. Their longer period of uninterrupted sleep also increased from 5.6 hours before pregnancy at 2.2 hours the first week after childbirth. Almost a third of the participants (31.7 %) spent more than 24 hours without sleeping the first week with a newborn baby.
The discontinuity of sleep is a problem for young mothers
The daily sleep duration of young mothers increased to 6.7 hours between the 2nd and 7th week of postpartum, and 7.3 hours between the 8th and 13th week. “However, their longer period of uninterrupted sleep remained significantly lower than the levels before pregnancy, 3.2 hours between the 2nd and the 7th week and 4.1 hours between the 8th and the 13th week. “These works are fundamental for our understanding of postpartum sleep. It is not the lack of sleep, but rather the lack of uninterrupted sleep which constitutes the main challenge for young mothers. (…) rather than simply encouraging mothers to take a nap when the baby sleeps, our results show that mothers would benefit more from strategies that protect uninterrupted sleep opportunities. concluded the authors.
