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Not only do mothers sleep shorter after childbirth, but periods of sleep without awakening decrease drastically.
SOMMENT – All future mothers know it: as soon as their child has pointed their nose, they can make a cross on the nights without alarm clock and the oily morning. But there are few to take the measure of the great upheaval that the arrival of a child will have on their sleep, and the immediate consequences on their well-being.
This is highlighted by a new study presented in early June at the annual conference of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine: not only do women lose crucial sleep hours in the first months after childbirth, but the arrival of their baby also disrupts the very structure of their nights. From linear, their sleep becomes permanently fragmented, which leaves them exhausted and increases the risk of postpartum depression.
“The significant loss of uninterrupted sleep during the postpartum period was the most striking discoveryexplains in a press release Teresa Lillis, the main author of the study. If mothers have generally found their total night’s sleep before pregnancy after the first post-partum week, the structure of their sleep remained deeply modified. »»
Disturbed sleep rhythms
To achieve this conclusion, the researchers followed the sleep cycles of 41 women who had just had their first child. For a full year, they collected their sleep data with them, obtained thanks to a connected watch.
They first found that their average duration of daily sleep had decreased drastically, going from 4.4 hours of sleep per night during the first week after childbirth, against 7.8 hours before their pregnancy.
Young mothers sleep less, and especially on much shorter durations. Their longer period of uninterrupted sleep went from 5.6 hours before pregnancy to 2.2 hours during the first week after childbirth. Nearly a third of the participants (31.7 %) said they had spent more than 24 hours without sleeping during the first week following the birth of their child.
Sleeping without interruption, a challenge for young mothers
Obviously, as their baby grows and spaces bottles or feedings, young mothers sleep more, reaching 7.3 hours of sleep on average between the eighth and the thirteenth week following childbirth.
But, observe the researchers, the discontinuity of sleep remains a real problem. They only sleep 3.2 hours without interruption between the second and seventh week and 4.1 hours between the eighth and the thirteenth week after birth.
For Teresa Lillis, these results “Basically transform understanding of postpartum sleep”. “It is not the lack of sleep, but rather the lack of uninterrupted sleep which constitutes the biggest challenge for new mothers”she summarizes. Not only exhausted, the latter are also more psychologically fragile, which increases the risk of postpartum depression and other health problems.
Hence the need to better take into account, from childbirth, their increased needs in terms of sleep, and to support them as best as possible in their postpartum weeks.
“Rather than just encouraging mothers to” take a nap when the baby takes a nap “, our results show that mothers would take the greatest benefit from strategies that protect the possibilities of uninterrupted sleep. »»
