Maternal Sleep and Arousals During Bedsharing With Infants

Abstract

Contrary to popular perception, studies show that parent-infant bedsharing is not uncommon in American society. A belief that bedsharing with infants negatively impacts the quality of adult sleep also appears wide-spread. This has not been substantiated, however, because the few studies that have measured the impact of bedsharing on adult sleep examined only bedsharing with another adult. In the present study, laboratory polysomnography was performed in 20 routinely bedsharing and 15 routinely solitary-sleeping, breastfeeding, Latino mother-infant pairs comparing the mothers' sleep when bedsharing to solitary-sleeping nights. Infants were 11-15 weeks old at the time. Irrespective of routine sleeping arrangement, mothers' total sleep time was not decreased on the bedsharing night compared to the solitary night. Across the two groups, percent Stage 3-4 sleep (of total sleep time) was significantly reduced on the bedsharing night but only by 3.9%, while Stage 1-2 sleep was increased 3.7%. Episodes of both Stages 3-4 and 1-2 were significantly shorter. The amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was unaffected. Overall, arousal frequency was significantly increased by 3.6 hour-1. As the increase in arousal frequency was stage specific, it could account for the pattern of stage changes. Nocturnal wakefulness was not increased, however, because awakenings were of shorter duration. these effects of bedsharing did not habituate with routine bedsharing because they were not diminished in the routinely bedsharing mothers compared to the routinely solitary-sleeping mothers. We find that the impact of bedsharing on maternal sleep is modest and somewhat different from the reported impact of sleeping with another adult. From the infant's standpoint, the effects on maternal sleep are adaptive to the extent that opportunities to monitor the infant's status are enhanced. The mother's caregiver role is likely germane to differential effects on sleep of bedsharing with an infant versus another adult.

Infant Arousals During Mother-Infant Bed Sharing: Implications for Infant Sleep and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Research

“…We recently reported, in these same mother-infant pairs, that mothers aroused 30% more often when they bed shared than when they slept alone. 29 Furthermore, the present results demonstrated an approximate doubling on the bed sharing night in the temporal overlap of infant with maternal arousals. Given that the largest increase in overlapping arousals by far reflected instances where the infant aroused first, these findings imply a high level of responsivity on the mother's part to the infant that did not habituate with routine bed sharing.…”

“…Some have been discussed in detail previously 29,30 and include the small bed size used for bed sharing and limitations on the extent to which the results would generalize to other subject populations. It is unlikely that a passive effect of bed size alone explains the facilitation of infant arousals with bed sharing, given (a) the close face-to-face proximity maintained by mothers, 50 (b) the observations that mothers typically managed the infant's position relative to her during periods of breastfeeding, often actively enclosing the infant within their arms (unpublished observations), and (c) that mother-infant bed sharing in a single bed (or couch of similar size) is probably not an uncommon occurrence in the population we sampled.…”

“…These stage effects could be explained by an increased arousal frequency found for both stages 3-4 and 1-2. 29 Similarly in the infants, total stage 3-4 duration (analogue of quiet sleep) was reduced and stage 3-4 episodes were shorter during bed sharing. Also, total stage 1-2 sleep was reciprocally increased in infants, but individual episodes of stage 1-2 and REM were both longer.…”

A Comparison of the Sleep?Wake Patterns of Cosleeping and Solitary-Sleeping Infants

“…Interestingly, on the cosleeping nights, infants did tend to wake up more often, but the lack of difference in the total amount of time awake demonstrated that their awakenings were briefer than those of the infants who slept alone. 17 Complementary to the results reported by Mosko and colleagues, 17 when routinely cosleeping infants sleep alone, they display fewer awakenings and more time in quiet sleep at 6 months of age. 19 Mosko and colleagues 20 also have reported on the proximity and positioning of mothers and their 11-15-week-old infants during bedsharing nights.…”

Parent-infant bed-sharing behavior

“…In this paper we present the results of a study investigating how behavioural variables such as feeding choice and partner presence in the bed may affect mother-infant sleep behaviour and therefore infant sleep safety. Comparison is made with the detailed observations of mother-infant bed-sharing 6 behaviour from McKenna and Mosko"s studies of breastfeeding Latina mothers and their babies (McKenna 1990;McKenna and Mosko 1994;McKenna, et al 1997;Mosko et al 1996;Mosko, et al 1997a;Mosko et al 1997b;Mosko et al 1997c;Richard et al 1997). These studies were conducted in a hospital sleep lab in California using polysomnographic monitoring and video observations of both mothers and infants sleeping together in a narrow hospital bed.…”