Research paperPerinatal maternal depression, antidepressant use and infant sleep outcomes: Exploring cross-lagged associations in a pregnancy cohort study
Section snippets
Method
This is a prospective cohort study of 282 pregnant women recruited before the 20th week of pregnancy (Wave 1), and followed up during third trimester (Wave 2), birth of their child (Wave 3), and six months (Wave 4), 12 months (Wave 5) and 36 months postpartum (Wave 6). For this study, 264 women (Mage = 31.21, SDage = 4.69, range: 18–48 years old) were included using data from Waves 1, 2, 4 and 5. Women are missing if they had withdrawn prior to or after Wave 3 or if they were missing both
Results
As predicted in our first hypothesis, we expected antidepressant exposure to influence sleep outcomes (Table 1). Infants differed only at six months postpartum in the average number of hours they were sleeping at night, such that infants with AD exposure slept for a significantly shorter period between 7pm and 7am. All other comparisons between the groups were not significant (p > .01).
None of the correlations for infant nocturnal sleep duration with sertraline-equivalent dose, and maternal and
Discussion
Our findings do not support a relationship between either earlier maternal depression predicting later infant sleep outcomes, or earlier increased infant nocturnal signaling predicting later depression. Maternal cognitions regarding setting limits for infant sleep, such as concern their baby will feel abandoned if not immediately responded to at night, did predict depressive symptoms at 12 months of age and these maternal cognitions also predicted increased nocturnal signaling at 12 months and
Contributors
MG and AL proposed the original study. MG, AL and DT designed the overall study. SW, MG and AL contributed to the planning and undertaking the statistical analysis and all authors contributed to the interpretation of findings. MG and SW prepared the draft of the paper and all authors critically reviewed and revised for content and gave approval to the final to be published version of the manuscript.
Role of the funding source
The organizations that funded the study did not contribute to any of the following elements of the paper: study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, and the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Conflict of interest
MG has previously received honorarium for speaking from Lundbeck. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Funding
This study is supported through the 2012 National Priority Funding Round of beyondblue in a three-year research grant (ID 519240) and a 2015 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant for 5 years (APP1106823). Financial support has also been obtained from the Academic Research Development Grants from Mercy Health and from the Centre for Mental Health and Well-Being, Deakin University.
Declaration of interest
MG has previously received honorarium for speaking from Lundbeck. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank those who have both supported and given advice in the development of MPEWS including: Marinus van IJzendoorn, Michael Permezel, Anne Buist, Philip Boyce, Marie-Paule Austin, Peter Fonagy, Robert Emde, Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg and Michelle Leech. The authors also thank the staff and students on the study and research coordinators: Tina Vaiano and Nicole Brooks and volunteer Susan Pitchford for their contribution to MPEWS. Thank you also to Carole Branch at
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2020, Infant Behavior and DevelopmentCitation Excerpt :Breastfeeding was initiated for 96.6% of mother/infants, and 19.4% (n = 41) of women had ceased breastfeeding at six months postpartum. Further details regarding breastfeeding in this cohort is at Galbally, Watson, Teti, and Lewis (2018). The bivariate frequencies of pacifier use by maternal psychosocial predictors are presented in Table 2.