Exploring Malaysian mothers' plans on sleeping arrangement with their newborn

Bed sharing is defined as a newborn sleeping in the same bed with an adult. Bed sharing may put the newborn at risk of suffocation due to accidental smothering.

This was a quasi-experimental study conducted in a tertiary referral hospital. Healthy post-delivery Malaysian mothers were randomly selected and enrolled into the control or the intervention group. On the day of discharge, mothers in the intervention group were interviewed face-to-face in the post-natal ward on their plans for sleeping arrangement with their newborn. After the interview, mothers were advised not to bed share with their newborn and were given an educational leaflet on safe sleeping practices. One week after discharge, mothers in both groups were interviewed over the telephone regarding their actual sleeping arrangements with their newborn using the same questionnaire. Logistic regression was performed to determine factors associated with reduced bed sharing.

A total of 94 mothers and 95 mothers were recruited to the control and intervention group, respectively. The baseline bed-sharing prevalence was similar between groups: 60.6% in the control group and 61.1% in the interventional group. The proportion of mothers who bed shared with their newborn reduced from 61.1 to 37.9% after the intervention (P < 0.001). Most mothers in the control group opted for bed sharing to ease breastfeeding (68.4%). Mothers in the control group had a 5.9 times higher odds of bed sharing.

In this study, the majority of mothers practiced bed sharing at baseline. A significant proportion of mothers changed their sleeping practices after receiving the intervention in the form of an information leaflet.