Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers

Richter, David; Krämer, Michael; Tang, Nicole K. Y.; Montgomery‐Downs, Hawley E.; Lemola, Sakari

doi:10.1093/sleep/zsz015

Cited by 93 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Sleep duration and sleep efficiency decreased from mid-pregnancy to the postpartum period, while the number of nights with difficulty maintaining sleep increased, all of which aligns with the results of previous surveys (Dørheim et al, 2014;Richter et al, 2019). Our finding of a postpartum sleep efficiency of 77% is comparable with results from two studies conducted in Norway (Dørheim et al, 2014;Dorheim et al, 2009), and lower than the recommended sleep efficiency of >85% (Bastien, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Mid-Pregnancy Insomnia and its Association with Perinatal Depressive Symptoms: A Prospective Cohort Study

Osnes

Eberhard‐Gran

Follestad

et al. 2020

Behavioral Sleep Medicine

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Objective/Background: Insomnia and depression are disorders that affect many perinatal women and that often are interrelated. The present study aimed to examine concurrent and prospective associations between midpregnancy insomnia and depression during mid-pregnancy and 8 weeks postpartum. Furthermore, differences in depression and in the sleep-related characteristics insomnia, chronotype, and sleep efficiency were explored between the two time points (mid-pregnancy versus 8 weeks postpartum), and between primiparous and multiparous participants. Participants/Methods: The study was part of the Norwegian populationbased Depression and Anxiety in the Perinatal Period (DAPP) prospective cohort study. Among 539 women that were recruited for participation when receiving a routine ultrasound examination, we analyzed data from hospital birth records and questionnaire responses from pregnancy week 17 and postpartum week 8. We used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale to measure depression. The Bergen Insomnia Scale, the reduced Horne-Östberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, and three questions from the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index were used to measure the sleep-related characteristics. Results: Mid-pregnancy insomnia was significantly associated with concurrent depression (p < .001), but not with postpartum depression (p = .288), in a linear mixed model with adjustment for several reproductive and psychosocial variables. Sleep efficiency was reduced from mid-pregnancy to postpartum (from 88% to 77%), and primiparous women reported less efficient sleep than multiparous women after childbirth. Conclusions: The results indicate that mid-pregnancy insomnia may be a marker for concurrent depression but not a predictor of postpartum depression. Future research should examine the extent to which treatment of insomnia from mid-pregnancy on reduces both perinatal insomnia and depression.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Mid-Pregnancy Insomnia and its Association with Perinatal Depressive Symptoms: A Prospective Cohort Study

Osnes

Eberhard‐Gran

Follestad

et al. 2020

Behavioral Sleep Medicine

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“…However, we also acknowledge that it is possible that the aforementioned beneficial effect of having offspring does not monotonically increase as the number of children increases. In addition, child rearing is also associated with increased financial and physical stress 30,31 . As shown in previous studies, parity is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk and increased BMI in both sexes 32,33 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males

Ning

Zhao

Franklin

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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previous studies of the association between parity and long-term cognitive changes have primarily focused on women and have shown conflicting results. We investigated this association by analyzing data collected on 303,196 subjects from the UK Biobank. We found that in both females and males, having offspring was associated with a faster response time and fewer mistakes made in the visual memory task. Subjects with two or three children had the largest differences relative to those who were childless, with greater effects observed in men. We further analyzed the association between parity and relative brain age (n = 13,584), a brain image-based biomarker indicating how old one's brain structure appears relative to peers. We found that in both sexes, subjects with two or three offspring had significantly reduced brain age compared to those without offspring, corroborating our cognitive function results. Our findings suggest that lifestyle factors accompanying having offspring, rather than the physical process of pregnancy experienced only by females, contribute to these associations and underscore the importance of studying such factors, particularly in the context of sex. Pregnancy involves dramatic hormonal and physiological changes. In part due to these large changes, the effect of pregnancy on cognitive and cardiovascular health has been studied 1,2. Declined cognitive function was observed during pregnancy 1,2. Researchers have also hypothesized that hormonal changes, which occur both during and after pregnancy, drive the association between parity (number of offspring) and cognitive function in later life. Multiple studies have investigated this association in females, though different conclusions have been found. Some studies found that parity was associated with better episodic memory and had a protective effect against Alzheimer's disease (AD) 3,4. Contrarily, parity has been associated with poor word recall score, Mini Mental State Exam score, and AD neural pathology 5,6. A recent study of approximately 10,000 male and female subjects found an association between the number of offspring and cognitive function in later life in both sexes, including memory and executive function, and suggested that socioeconomic status largely accounted for the association 7. In addition to the association between cognitive function and parity, the association between brain structural change and parity has been studied previously. Hoekzema et al. reported that the volume of certain gray matter regions was reduced during pregnancy and the reductions did not recover for at least 2 years post partum 2 , while others reported that the gray matter restoration process was evident within the first few months postpartum 8,9. Most studies on the association between brain structure and parity had a relatively small sample size (n < 100) and less than three years of postpartum follow-up 2,8,9. To date, it is still unclear if there are any long-term effects of parity on brain structure in the mid-to-old age population. We therefore so...

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“…Lastly, we would expect our results for satisfaction with sleep to generalize comparatively well to other countries. First, childbirth's effects on sleep are large and therefore generally easier to replicate, and second, one can argue these effects are to a higher degree biologically rooted (Saxbe et al, 2018) and there is little evidence that they are influenced by socio-economic factors (Richter et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First childbirth marks an important transitional period. Primiparous parents experience elevated psychosocial stress, health challenges, increased mood disorders (Saxbe, Rossin-Slater, & Goldenberg, 2018), and disturbed sleep (Richter, Krämer, Tang, Montgomery-Downs, & Lemola, 2019). Still, parents report an increased sense of purpose, need fulfillment, and positive emotions (Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013;Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of having children on domain-specific life satisfaction: A quasi-experimental longitudinal investigation using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data.

Krämer¹,

Rodgers²

2020

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers

Abstract: Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.

Cited by 93 publications

References 38 publications

Mid-Pregnancy Insomnia and its Association with Perinatal Depressive Symptoms: A Prospective Cohort Study

Mid-Pregnancy Insomnia and its Association with Perinatal Depressive Symptoms: A Prospective Cohort Study

Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males

The impact of having children on domain-specific life satisfaction: A quasi-experimental longitudinal investigation using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data.

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