Professor’s study focuses on sleep patterns of new mothers

West Virginia University Associate Professor Hawley Montgomery-Downs is conducting research about the effect of sleep deprivation on new mothers.

"We expect women to care for an infant and contribute to society, yet our public policies do not encourage safe, healthy families," Montgomery-Downs said.

Montgomery-Downs and a team of students have been working in the Department of Psychology's Sleep Research Lab to find out if sleep patterns of new mothers improve from when the child is a few weeks until they are two years old.

This study follows an initial research project, which examined the sleep patterns of new mothers for 12 weeks right after their first child was born.

"Our previous work shows that postpartum women's sleep is sufficient in length, but highly fragmented or chopped into short bits," Montgomery-Downs said. "To get the maximum benefits from sleep, it should be consolidated into one continuous period."

This study proved that brand new mothers get an average of 7.2 hours of interrupted sleep over about 10.5 hours.

While this may seem like a sufficient amount of sleep, the study showed new mothers are not having proper sleep cycles.

"Each cycle is 70 to 110 minutes long," Montgomery-Downs said. "If you don't get all of the stages, you miss out on their health and cognitive benefits."

This initial study proved that new mothers get an inadequate night's sleep, which decreases daily function.

"Sleep is not like a book, you can't wake up and then go back to sleep and start up where you left off," Montgomery-Downs said. "When we are awakened at night, we have to start the sleep cycle over again."

The group's new study is trying to figure out if the sleep cycles of new mothers improves as children get older.

The goal is to see when and if the mothers' sleep cycles improves and how these sleep patterns affect their daily functioning.

Interrupted sleep cycles can cause new mothers to have reaction impairment similar to an intoxicated person, causing their daily functioning to drastically decrease, Montgomery-Downs said.

Interrupted sleep can also make mothers more at risk for developing postpartum depression and other mental health problems.

So far, the study has suggested that daily function decreases as the child gets older and parents return to work.

"Although women's sleep improves across the first three postpartum months, their daytime functioning worsens across this same period,"

Montgomery-Downs believes this study shows a need for major reforms regarding when parents have to return to work after a child is born.

Mothers involved in the study wear a device called an actigraph, which is similar to a wristwatch.

The device detects sleep cycles, movements and moods of the mothers for one week.

The actigraph also detects the reaction time of the participants by seeing how fast the mother's hit a button after a bull's eye is flashed on its screen.

Participants also spend a day at the WVU sleep lab where they take four naps two hours apart.

The study is currently ongoing and looking for participants 18 and older who have one child, are not pregnant and do not have sleep disorders.

For more information about the compensated study, call 304-216-6667.