Sleep relief for moms
THE downside of the newly arrived beloved bundle of joy is the nearly universal curse of new parenthood -- sleep deprivation. Parents of newborns don’t sleep enough, and when they do, it’s in fits and fragments.
The first study to test a behavioral-educational intervention to help first-time mothers get more shut-eye offers hope for relief. In the report, published this month in the journal Sleep, researchers provided sleep education and support to 15 new mothers, and compared them with 15 who didn’t get training. After six weeks, the women who received training got an average of 57 minutes more sleep nightly than the untrained women. Infants of the more rested mothers got 46 minutes more nighttime sleep.
“We emphasized making sleep a priority,” says Robyn Stremler, professor of nursing at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “We encouraged women to go to bed earlier, or stay in bed longer, if the baby was asleep.” They also encouraged women to use relaxation techniques to help them fall asleep between wails, suggested limiting time with visitors who want to see the new baby and offered tips on soothing babies to sleep.
Perhaps most important, nurses checked in with weekly phone calls, says Ralph Downey III, director of Loma Linda University Medical Center’s Sleep Disorders Center. “Women knew they’d have someone to talk to every week,” he says. “Just acknowledging that ‘you need your sleep too,’ goes a long way.”
