Science & Technology, Australia (Commonwealth Union) – Sleep forms an essential part of a baby’s development. A newly born baby usually develops its circadian rhythm after 3 months with the inability to distinguish from night and day often resulting in sleep interruptions for parents and the baby may take up to a year to fully develop its circadian rhythm. Insufficient sleep-in babies can severely impact their growth development, hence suitable environments are often needed to facilitate a baby’s sleeping hours.
Recent research consisting of over 2000 parents of babies aged 3-18 months emphasizes the advantages and safety of behavioral sleep interventions (BSIs), as hard as they might seem to carry out.
Most of the 2090 families of around 64 percent indicated the application of at least 1 of the 3 common BSIs, where ‘parental presence’, ‘controlled crying’ (referred to as modified extinction) or ‘cry it out’ (unmodified extinction) – as a method of enhancing infant sleep self-regulation so infants adjust on their own to settle themselves to sleep.
Flinders University clinical psychology researcher and international infant sleep expert Dr Michal Kahn, presently serving as Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel, states that pediatric insomnia is quite usual that leads to a lot of distress in families.
She further indicated that within the clinic they met parents who did not get a good night’s sleep for months or even years at times, certainly effecting their mood, cognitive performance together with their family life with their partner and baby.
“There is controversy about the safety and even necessity of BSIs, yet claims against these interventions are theoretical in nature, whereas research evidence to date has not provided any indication of short- or long-term adverse consequences of BSIs.”
“Our study provides further evidence for the safety of these interventions by demonstrating that parents who had and had not used them did not differ in measures of parent-infant bonding, parent depression, or parent sleep.”
When it came to infant sleep, the findings revealed that carrying out unmodified and modified extinction was linked to longer and more integrated infant sleep, implying that the interventions are effective in lowering pediatric insomnia symptoms.
Dr Kahn stated that many parents may want to attempt these interventions but are hesitant given non-based claims of being unsafe.
“Parents and clinicians should thus be aware of the range of safe evidence-based treatments available to ameliorate infant sleep problems, which could considerably improve parents’ health and wellbeing.”
The US-based study had the presentation by Dr Kahn and senior pediatric sleep experts Dr Michael Gradisar and Dr Natalie Barnett at last year’s World Sleep Congress and was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
The study was conducted with a questionnaire and permission granted from families for more evidence from baby monitoring tools.
Parents who took part filled an online questionnaire related to their infant’s sleep, their own sleep, daytime sleepiness, depression levels, as well as parent-infant bonding. The infant sleep was evaluated through an objective, exploratory auto-videosomnography data obtained from the 14-days prior to survey fulfilment.
Some of the key highlights of the research were that 64 percent of parents indicated implementing BSIs and the average age where an intervention was made was 5.3 months. Unmodified and Modified Extinction was rated as having a significantly increased difficulty to carry out when contrasted with the Parents presence, but also as more helpful, shorter, and quicker to show enhancements.
The infant nighttime sleep was more and further consolidated in the Unmodified and Modified Extinction groups in comparison with the Parental Presence and no-BSI groups. No differences were seen in the BSI groups in parent sleep, sleepiness, depression, or parent-infant bonding.
Further research into baby sleep patterns is likely to play a key role in child care in the years ahead with enhanced research tools utilized by researchers across the world.
