Our data based on caregiver's self-report suggested that partial breastfeeding and bed-sharing may be associated with less sleep in infants. Health care professionals need to work with parents of newborns to develop coping strategies that will help prevent early weaning of breastfeeding.

No abstract

The objectives of this longitudinal study were to examine the trajectory of breastfed infants’ growth in China to update growth standards for early childhood, and to compare these updated Chinese growth standards with the growth standards recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006.This longitudinal cohort study enrolled 1,840 healthy breastfed infants living in an "optimal" environment favorable to growth and followed up until one year of age from 2007 to 2010. The study subjects were recruited from 60 communities in twelve cities in China. A participating infant’s birth weight was measured within the first hour of the infant’s life, and birth length and head circumference within 24 hours after birth. Repeated weekly and monthly anthropometric measurements were also taken. Multilevel (ML) modelling via MLwiN2.25 was fitted to estimate the growth curves of weight-for-age (WFA), length-for-age (LFA), and head circumference-for-age (HFA) for the study sample as a whole and by child sex, controlling for mode of delivery, the gravidity and parity of the mother, infant’s physical measurements at birth, infant’s daily food intaking frequency per day, infant’s medical conditions, the season when the infant’s physical measurement was taken, parents’ ages, heights, and attained education, and family structure and income per month. During the first four weeks after birth, breastfed infants showed an increase in weight, length, and head circumference of 1110g, 4.9 cm, and 3.2 cm, respectively, among boys, and 980 g, 4.4 cm, and 2.8 cm, respectively, among girls. Throughout infancy, the total growth for these three was 6930 g, 26.4 cm, and 12.5 cm, respectively, among boys, and 6480 g, 25.5 cm, and 11.7 cm, respectively, among girls. As expected, there was a significant sex difference in growth during the first year. In comparison with the WHO growth standards, breastfed children in our study were heavier in weight, longer in length, and bigger in head circumference, with the exception of a few age points during the first two to four months on the upper two percentile curves.Our data suggested the growth curves for breastfed infants in China were significantly different in comparison with those based on the WHO standards. The adoption of the WHO infant growth standards among Chinese infants, as well as the methods used in the development of such growth standards in China, need careful and coordinated consideration.

The aim of the study was to investigate the sleep patterns and the prevalence and types of sleep problems among urban Chinese children under 5 years of age. Data were gathered on 14,883 children selected by stratified random sampling from 12 cities, using the Children's Sleep Status Questionnaire (CSSQ). The parents were asked about their children's average sleep time in a 24-hour period and common sleep problems noted during the past month. Of this sample, 20.3% of the children were reported as suffering from at least one of the 14 sleep disturbances studied. The five most common sleep problems were difficulty falling asleep (found in 7.5% of pre-school children), nocturnal awakening (4.9%), bruxism (4.7%), snoring (4.4%) and mouth breathing (3.0%). Excluding the cases with sleep disorders, the average sleep time over a 24-h period progressively shortened with age, from 15.8 hours at 1 month to 13.1 hours at 6 months, 12.6 hours at 12 months, 12.0 hours at 2 years, and 11.3 hours at 5 years. The number of naps and nocturnal awakenings, respectively, decreased from 4 and 2 per day at 1 month of age to 1 and 0 per day at 24 and 18 months; most children continued to nap up to the age of 5 years. Our findings suggest that sleep problems are common in Chinese children aged 0-5 years. We also found that, with the development of society, certain changes in sleep time of the children have occurred, there being about 0.5-1.0 hour less sleep than is commonly reported in medical textbooks.

No abstract