Infant Sleep Consolidation Assessed by Maternal Perception and Actigraphy

This study aims to (1) compare three different subjective and objective measures in assessing the proportion of infants sleeping through the night and (2) identify which sleep variables contribute to maternal appraisal of sleeping through the night.

Fifty-six mothers of 6-months-old infants completed the Sleep Practices Questionnaire (SPQ), assessing at what age their infant started to sleep through the night. Infants were dichotomized as sleeping through the night or not at 6 months. Total nocturnal sleep duration, longest consecutive sleep duration, and total duration of nocturnal awakenings were measured with sleep diaries and actigraphy (12 nights). The proportion of infants sleeping through the night was assessed using the SPQ, sleep diaries and actigraphy. Forward binary logistic regression was used to determine which diary or actigraphy variables contributed to maternal appraisal.

Less than half of infants were sleeping through the night when using the SPQ (44.2%) and sleep diaries (39.5%), while this proportion increased to 90.7% with actigraphy. Sleep-diary consecutive sleep duration was the only variable contributing to maternal appraisals of sleeping through the night.

While the type of measurements yielded different proportions, sleep-diary derived longest consecutive sleep duration was highly associated with maternal appraisal.