An intervention tailored for Black first-time mothers helped increase their infants’ sleep time, researchers have found, a notable result as many studies have shown Black infants get less sleep on average than White infants.
Less sleep has historically put Black children at higher risk for negative outcomes including obesity and poorer social-emotional functioning and cognitive development. These disparities persist into adulthood, double dose of claritin d the researchers note, as previous studies have shown.
Justin A. Lavner, PhD, with the department of psychology at the University of Georgia in Athens, led this post hoc secondary analysis of the Sleep SAAF (Strong African American Families) study, a randomized clinical trial of 234 participants comparing a responsive parenting (RP) intervention with a safety control group over the first 16 weeks post partum. The original analysis studied the effects of the intervention on rapid weight gain.
In the original analysis, the authors write that “From birth to 2, the prevalence of high weight for length (above the 95th percentile) is 25% higher among African American children compared to White children. From age 2 to 19, the rate of obesity is more than 50% higher among African American children compared to White children. Similar disparities persist into adulthood: rates of obesity are approximately 25% higher among African American adults compared to White adults.”
The differences in early rapid weight gain may be driving the disparities, the authors write.
Elements of the intervention
The intervention in the current analysis included materials delivered at the 3- and 8-week home visits focused on soothing and crying, feeding, and interactive play in the babies’ first months. Families were recruited from Augusta University Medical Center in Augusta, Ga., and had home visits at 1, 3, 8, and 16 weeks post partum.
Mothers got a packet of handouts and facilitators walked through the information with them. The measures involved hands-on activities, discussion, and videos, all tailored for Black families, the authors state.
Mothers were taught about responding appropriately at night when their baby cries, including giving the baby a couple of minutes to fall back to sleep independently and by using calming messages, such as shushing or white noise, before picking the baby up.
Babies learn to fall asleep on their own
They also learned to put infants to bed early (ideally by 8 p.m.) so the babies would be calm but awake and could learn to fall asleep on their own.
The control group’s guidance was matched for intensity and session length but focused on sleep and home safety, such as reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), keeping the baby’s sleep area close to, but away from, the mother’s bed, and preventing shaken baby syndrome.
In both groups, the 3-week visit session lasted about 90-120 minutes and the 8-week visit lasted about 45-60 minutes.
Longer sleep with the intervention
A total of 212 Black mothers, average age 22.7, were randomized – 108 to the RP group and 104 to the control group. Answers on questionnaires were analyzed and at 16 weeks post partum, infants in the RP group (relative to controls) had:
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Longer reported nighttime sleep (mean difference, 40 minutes [95% confidence interval, 3-77]).
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Longer total sleep duration (mean difference, 73 minutes [95% CI, 14-131]).
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Fewer nighttime wakings (mean difference, −0.4 wakings [95% CI, −0.6 to −0.1]).
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Greater likelihood of meeting guidelines of at least 12 hours of sleep per day (risk ratio, 1.4 [95% CI, 1.1 to 1.8]) than controls.
Findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
Additionally, mothers in the RP group more frequently reported they engaged in practices such as letting babies have a few minutes to fall back to sleep on their own (RR, 1.6 [95% CI, 1.0-2.6]) and being less likely to feed their infant just before the baby’s bedtime (RR, 0.5 [95% CI, 0.3-0.8]).
In an accompanying invited commentary, Sarah M. Honaker, PhD, department of pediatrics, Indiana University, Indianapolis, and Alicia Chung, EdD, Center for Early Childhood Health and Development at New York University, write that though the added average sleep duration is one of the most significant findings, there is a possibility of desirability bias because it was reported by the mothers after specific guidance by the facilitators.
“Nonetheless,” the editorialists write, “even if the true effect were half as small, this additional sleep duration could yield notable benefits in infant development if the effect persisted over time. The difference in night wakings between the intervention and control groups (1.8 vs 1.5 per night) at 16 weeks postpartum was statistically significant, though it is unclear whether this difference is clinically meaningful to families.”
They note that it is unclear from the study how the intervention was culturally adapted and how the adaptation might have affected outcomes.
Sleep intervention trials have focused on White families
The editorialists write that much is known about the benefits of behavioral sleep intervention in controlled trials and general population settings, and no adverse effects on infant attachment or cortisol levels have been linked to the interventions.
However, they add, “Unfortunately, this substantial progress in our understanding of infant BSI [behavioral sleep intervention] comes with a caveat, in that most previous studies have been performed with White families from mid-to-high socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Dr. Honaker and Dr. Chung write, “[I]t is important to note that much work remains to examine the acceptability, feasibility, and efficacy of infant BSI in other groups that have been historically marginalized.”
Dr. Lavner and colleagues point out that before their study, there had been little emphasis on interventions to encourage better sleep in general for Black infants, “as most early sleep interventions for this population have focused on SIDS prevention.”
“To our knowledge, Sleep SAAF is the first study to show any benefits of [an] RP intervention on sleep and sleep practices among Black infants and their families,” they write.
The researchers note that a limitation of the study is that the study sample was limited to Black first-time mothers recruited from a single medical center in Georgia.
The study by Dr. Lavner et al. was funded by the National Institutes of Health, a Harrington Faculty Fellowship from the University of Texas, and an award from the Penn State Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Editorialist Dr. Honaker reported receiving grants from Nationwide Children’s Hospital (parent grant, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to evaluate the acceptability of infant behavioral sleep intervention in Black families.
This article originally appeared on MDedge.com, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
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