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 Almost half of women reported that they slept more than usual during
pregnancy, but did not have better quality sleep, said senior author
Tiina Paunio of Helsinki University Hospital in Finland.
Overall, 12 percent of women and 15 percent of men had either
insomnia or too little sleep, researchers found.
“The results are well in line with those obtained from previous
studies for pregnant women: symptoms of insomnia and, in particular,
frequent nocturnal awakenings were very common, and a majority of
the women (over 80 percent) also reported that their sleep quality
had worsened during pregnancy,” Paunio said.
The researchers studied a population of 1,667 mothers and 1,498
fathers in Finland who were part of a long-term study. Participants
were recruited during pregnancy when almost half were expecting
their first child. They provided data before their child’s birth and
several more times in the baby’s first 24 months of life.
Researchers evaluated the participants’ problems falling asleep,
nocturnal awakenings, too-early awakenings and sleep quality as well
as “short sleep” – defined as either a two-hour difference between
self-assessed sleep need and actual sleep duration or a sleep
duration shorter than six hours per night.
They found that insomnia was more common for women, with 10 percent
reporting it, along with 6 percent of men. Sleep debt was more
common for men, at 10 percent versus almost 5 percent of women.
Parents with insomnia more often had symptoms of depression than
those without insomnia. Men with lower education levels, poor health
and a higher number of children more often had short sleep, as
reported in Sleep Medicine.
“Interestingly, short sleep was explained by very different factors
in women and men: among women, it related to negative life events
and depressiveness but among men, to more general background
factors, such as health, education and number of children in the
household,” Paunio told Reuters Health by email.
Most women reported poorer quality of sleep during pregnancy than
before, and one in 10 experienced multiple insomnia symptoms, Paunio
said.
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“It is yet to be seen how symptoms of insomnia and depressed mood
affect the health of the parents in (the) postpartum period as well
as that of the offspring in our sample,” Paunio said.
“In a stressful life situation or after a psychological trauma, it
is normal to experience transient symptoms of insomnia and they do
not normally pose a serious problem for health,” Paunio said.
“Chronic symptoms of insomnia do, however, pose a risk for both
(physical) and mental health.”
For these Finnish women, insomnia in pregnancy was less common than
it is for women in the U.S., said Jen Jen Chang of Saint Louis
University in Missouri, which could have been influenced by other
factors like employment status, work hours and the number of other
children in the family.
“When moms don't get enough sleep, it has a negative impact on a
developing baby,” Chang, who was not part of the new study, told
Reuters Health by email. “Sleep disturbance and short sleep duration
during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk for adverse
pregnancy outcomes including preterm births, preeclampsia, cesarean
deliveries, and postpartum depression.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2emyI6V Sleep Medicine, online November 3,
2016.
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