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Premature infants' nighttime awakening and their mothers' attachment styles and bedtime behavior

University of British Columbia

Infants’ sleep problems, especially, nighttime awakenings, are common concerns of parents and may have developmental implications for infants, particularly infants born prematurely. Between one quarter and one third of all children aged six months to five years of age experience sleeping problems. Many factors have been associated with the development of these problems, although none has been shown to be causal. Although theorists have hypothesized that insecure attachment between a mother and her child may lead to intense maternal involvement at bedtime (e.g., active physical comforting), which may be linked to the infant’s inability to develop sleep self-initiation skills, mothers’ styles of attachment with their infants, particularly an anxious style, have not been researched. France and Blampied’s model of infant sleep was used as the guiding framework to examine relationships between mothers’ attachment and bedtime behaviour and premature infants’ sleep. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from a community-based sample of 105 mothers of premature infants aged 5-6 months (gestationally corrected age). Boys represented 61% of the sample and 63% of the infants were first-born children. The main outcome measures were infants’ nighttime awakenings (frequency and duration) and mothers’ perceptions of the quality of their infants’ sleep. The mothers reported that 55% of their children had sleep problems (17% were considered serious). The reported mean frequency of awakening was 2.1 times per night and the mean duration was 45.7 minutes. Preterm infants’ nighttime awakening was associated with their mothers having an anxious style of attachment and intense involvement at bedtime. The mother’s style of attachment (anxious) and a maternal history of sleep problems were predictors of the duration of infants’ nighttime awakening. Intense maternal involvement and the infant’s birth order were significant predictors of the infants’ frequency of nighttime awakenings. This study directs healthcare providers to focus on maternal factors such as having an anxious style of attachment and over involvement in bedtime settling when assessing infants’ sleep problems. More research is warranted to explain the mechanisms of these associations and to determine whether they are causal in nature.

Text

2010-11-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29964

Nursing

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/