Reducing night waking in infancy: a primary care intervention.
Approximately 25% of infants wake regularly at night and need help in resettling. The purpose of this study was to implement and evaluate a brief intervention to prevent such night waking. The study used a prospective cohort design with historical controls. Information from the control group was collected at the 9-month visit. The intervention group was enrolled at the 4-month visit. The intervention consisted of information about sleep-onset associations, completion of a sleep chart, and discussion about sleep with the pediatrician. The outcome was also measured at the 9-month visit. To obscure the purpose of the study, the outcome questionnaire for both groups addressed feeding and sleeping. One hundred twenty-eight (74%) of 172 eligible infant-parent pairs comprised the control group and 164 (74%) of 222 the intervention group. The majority of families were white, married, and well-educated. The groups were similar with regard to sociodemographic variables and factors thought to be related to night waking such as current breast-feeding, thumb/pacifier sucking, maternal isolation, and parental perception of difficult child. At 9 months of age, the intervention infants were reported to experience 36% less night waking per week compared with those in the control group (2.5 vs 3.9 wakings per week, P = .02). Frequent night waking was twice as common in control infants (27% vs 14%, P = .01). It is concluded that this pediatric intervention can help parents reduce night waking in infants.
Adair
R
R
Department of Pediatrics, Boston City Hospital, Boston University School of Medicine, MA 02118.
Zuckerman
B
B
Bauchner
H
H
Philipp
B
B
Levenson
S
S
D015331:Cohort Studies; D003624:Darkness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007224:Infant Care; D007225:Infant Food; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology*