As a sleep-deprived mum, I know all too well how exhausting it is to have a baby who regularly wakes throughout the night.
The good news is, according to researchers at the University of Limerick, I’m not alone – a lot more babies wake up in the night than my peers might lead me to believe – but, all that interrupted sleep can have a massive impact on a mum’s health, a lot more than we might realise.
In fact, mums of babies who wake during the night are more likely to suffer from stress, depression and poor physical health, according to new research forming part of the Government’s Growing Up in Ireland study.
The study, which is the first to explore infant sleep patterns on such a large scale, identified four sleep patterns after more than 11,000 mums of 9-month old babies were interviewed, to explore the associations between infant sleep profiles and their mothers’ health and well-being.
The most common pattern represented almost half of the babies, who would occasionally wake during the night. The mums of these children reported their baby’s sleep was not a problem for them. A quarter of the infants, however, had sleeping habits that were causing mental health problems for mums.
One of the authors of the study, Dr Stephen Gallagher, said that the sleep profile of an infant can have a variety of health effects on the mother, some of which are “more problematic” than others, for example depression and poor physical health.
He explains, “Inadequate sleep quantity and quality in infants can have adverse effects on family function, parental stress, as well as marital relationships.”
The infants involved in the study will take part in further research at three years of age, to assess any long-term effects associated with poor sleep for both mum and child. In the meantime, check out some ways to escape the baby bubble that sleep-deprived mums can so often find themselves trapped in.
