(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Women who suffer from depression before their babies
are born are more likely to have infants who keep them up at night.
A new study finds these infants have a harder time settling down to sleep, sleep
for shorter periods of time, and take shorter daytime naps than infants whose
mothers did not suffer from depression during their pregnancies.
The authors believe these effects might be due to fetal exposure to the stress
hormone cortisol. But that doesn’t mean these babies are irreversibly destined
to sleep poorly once they are born.
“We do think that we could develop a behavioral and environmental intervention
to improve entrainment of sleep and circadian rhythms in the high risk infants,”
study author Roseanne Armitage, Ph.D., director of the Sleep and
Chronophysiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan Depression Center, was
quoted as saying. “Regardless of the cause, they may still be modifiable since
brain regulation is very plastic and responsive in childhood.”
The study was conducted among 18 healthy, full term infants, 11 of whom were
born to mothers suffering from depression. Both mothers and children were
measured for sleep quality over a six-month period using standard tests.
SOURCE: SLEEP, published online May 1, 2009
