Science & Sensibility

My first reaction to the now-infamous Time magazine cover was to groan out loud. Like many of you, I was horrified by that cover’s mean-spirited tone. If we didn’t get the message from the picture, there was also the antagonistic caption: “Are you mom enough?” It wasn’t until later that I recognized that this cover, and the controversy that followed, actually reflected a positive shift. Many things had changed since I first became aware of this topic more than 20 years ago.

In 1992, I was just finishing my post-doctoral fellowship at the University of New Hampshire and was expecting my second baby.  My first experience had gone not particularly well, so I spent months educating myself about birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum. During this time, I became friends with Dr. Muriel Sugarman. We were both on the board of a local child abuse organization in Massachusetts. Muriel was a child psychiatrist at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital and an amazing ally to the breastfeeding community. She was interested in long-term breastfeeding and had collected some data. (“Long-term” was operationally defined for that study as “six months or longer.”)  We started working on it together, and bit by bit, had some findings to report.

We submitted one of our first articles on weaning ages to [a well-known journal in pediatrics].  Consistent with studies in other parts of the world, when weaning was child led, it tended to occur at ages 2.5 to 3. So far, so good.

But then there were our outliers….the babies who weaned at age 5…and a couple of babies were even older. The reviewers, all women we later learned, went completely nuts. If it had been up to them, we would have been both rejected…and flogged. (Eighteen years later, these are still the worst reviews I’ve ever received.) They hated us, our study, and mostly definitely our “weird” mothers.

I wasn’t sure what to do next, until a colleague handed me an article called, “Darwin takes on mainstream medicine.” It described how extended breastfeeding, babywearing, and cosleeping  conferred a survival advantage for moms and babies, and was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings. That was radical stuff in the mid-1990s. I sacked our introduction and rewrote it using this framework.

The next question was where to send the revised manuscript. I called a pediatric researcher I knew in Philadelphia. He said, “Oh, I never send articles to [well-known pediatric journal]. They’re mean!” That had certainly been my experience. He recommended Clinical Pediatrics, where we got a much more positive reception. The article came out. We were happy. End of story….or so we thought.

In 1997, AAP Statement on Breastfeeding was released. Controversy swirled around that statement for months about one bit in particular: that women breastfeed for at least 12 months and “as long thereafter as is mutually desired.” I was going about my business, blithely unaware that Muriel and I were smack in the middle of the controversy. What reference did the AAP cite to support “as long thereafter as is mutually desired”? You’ve got it: Sugarman and Kendall-Tackett (1995)!

That paper taught me a lot. Ten years later, when I applied for APA Fellow, I identified it as one of the most important in my career. I learned firsthand about the intense negative stigma surrounding extended breastfeeding. I was equally amazed to discover a quiet underground of women who were defying cultural norms and nursing their older babies right under the radar of family, friends, and healthcare providers. Avery described this phenomenon as “closet nursing,” and noted that extended breastfeeding had a lot in common with revealing sexual orientation. Brave souls who chose to be up front faced marginalization—or worse.

Through much of the decade that followed publication of our article, Muriel and I, along with Liz Baldwin and Kathy Dettwyler, frequently had to write letters to courts and child protection agencies on behalf of mothers who were being investigated for child abuse. Their crime? Extended breastfeeding.

Which brings us up to the present time. Yes, the Time magazine article said mean things. But look at it this way: extended breastfeeding is being discussed in a mainstream publication. In addition, thanks to social media, the “quiet underground” is quiet no more. I’ve been amazed at outpouring of support from both celebrities—and ordinary moms—speaking opening and positively about extended breastfeeding. It was something I couldn’t even imagine in 1995. I think it’s safe to say that extended breastfeeding is officially out of the closet.

In closing, I’d like to suggest that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Drs. Ruth Lawrence and Larry Gartner, and the other brave members of the 1997 AAP Committee on Breastfeeding. Their statement did much to move extended breastfeeding out of the margins and into the public square (and Muriel and I were happy to have a small part in that). We still have a ways to go. But let’s take a moment and savor this small victory.

And to the members of the 1997 AAP Committee, I say this: We, the quiet underground, salute you!

The two articles published from that data set are:

Kendall-Tackett, K.A., & Sugarman, M. (1995). The social consequences of long-term breastfeeding.  Journal of Human Lactation, 11, 179-183.

Sugarman, M., & Kendall-Tackett, K.A. (1995). Weaning ages in a sample of American women who practice extended nursing. Clinical Pediatrics, 34(12), 642-647.

 About Kathleen Kendall-Tackett

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., IBCLC, FAPA is a health psychologist and board-certified lactation consultant. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Praeclarus Press, a new small press specializing in women’s health. She is a research associate at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire and a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University School of Medicine in Amarillo, Texas. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Clinical Lactation, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and is president-elect of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology. www.KathleenKendall-Tackett.com

 

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett American Academy of Pediatrics, Breastfeeding, Guest Posts, Research AAP, American Academy of Pediatrics, breastfeeding, breastfeeding in the news, breastfeeding statistics, extended breastfeeding, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, stories about breastfeeding, Time Magazine

 

 

“Crying it out” and sleep issues have always been a “hot” topic amongst parents and many of today’s parents look to childbirth educators and others for information on how best to prepare for and deal with their infant’s sleep habits.  Talking about infants and sleep can be as flammable a topic as talking politics.   Today’s post is by regular contributor Kathleen Kendall-Tackett takes a look at recent study on the long-term effects of controlled crying and shares her thoughts on the validity of the study and examines the potential shortcomings and limitations.  How do you speak about sleep and infants in your classes or with your clients and patients?  Do you have information that parents have found particularly helpful? Let us know in the comments section of today’s post.- SM

A recent article in Pediatrics (Price, Wake, Ukoumunne, & Hiscock, 2012) reported on the long-term effects of a controlled-crying intervention for parents of infants 8 to 10 months old. The children were assessed five years post-intervention and showed no apparent harm. The media response to these findings has been overwhelming. Could this be the answer that weary parents have been waiting for? The authors certainly thought so. In fact, they concluded that practitioners could “confidently” recommend this approach.

Before we recommend this approach to parents, let’s step back for a moment and consider whether this recommendation is warranted. We must critically evaluate both the current study and where it fits within the larger literature in maternal-child health. In my view, there are a number of serious limitations to this study that call into question whether we should recommend this practice to parents.

Study Design

In the Price et al. (2012) study, the researchers randomly assigned parents to either intervention or control groups. In the intervention group, parents received instruction in controlled crying, i.e., to wait an increasing amount of time before responding to their infants’ cries, or “camping out,” which involved staying with their infants until the infants fell asleep on their own. The parents in the control group received “usual care,” which meant no specific recommendation regarding infant sleep. At earlier time points, the authors found that the controlled-crying intervention prevented depression in mothers and improved babies’ sleep.

At the five-year follow-up with 225 families (69% of the original sample), the researchers found that the intervention did not adversely affect the parent-child bond, the mother’s depression level, the child’s level of adjustment, or their cortisol levels. Indeed, they noted, that there were no adverse effects. However, there were also no long-term benefits. Still, the authors concluded that practitioners could recommend this technique to prevent postpartum depression and improve infant sleep.

Study Limitations

There were a number of limitations to this study. Below is a brief synopsis.

The Impact of Context: The Cumulative Effect of Childhood Adversities 

Context is an important consideration when evaluating potential harm caused by a parenting technique. In other words, how many parental missteps does it take for children to show evidence of lasting harm? Fortunately, children are resilient and don’t require perfect parenting.  However, chronic bad parenting does harm children and the effects are cumulative (Shonkoff, Boyce, & McEwen, 2009). Chronic bad parenting has also been described as childhood adversity in such major research studies as the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010) and New Zealand’s Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (Danese et al., 2009).

So does controlled crying cause infant harm? If it occurs in families with generally warm, responsive, and loving parents, probably not. Because children are resilient, they can endure a lot. Family strengths can buffer any potential negative effects.

I am more concerned about the impact of controlled crying when it takes place in high-risk families. This is a key limitation in Price et al. study. A full 31% of their original sample was lost to follow-up. Most of these families were identified as “high disadvantage.” In other words, the group most likely to be negatively affected by controlled crying was not in the follow-up study.

Assessing “Dose”: The Chronicity and Severity of the Experience

When assessing potential harm of a practice, it’s also important to consider chronicity and severity. In terms of infant sleep, we need to know how often controlled crying was used in an average week, how many weeks or months that the parents employed these techniques, and in an average episode how many minutes elapsed before the parents responded to their babies. I would expect more long-term negative effects if parents did not respond to their babies’ cries for long periods of time (such as 45 minutes or longer), and that they used this technique for months on end. In contrast, if parents used this technique a few times and for a few minutes, there probably wouldn’t be any negative effects.

Chronicity and severity is basically a way of factoring in “dose” of the intervention. This important nuance was totally absent from the Price et al. study. From their article, we know little about what the parents actually did. A full range of practices was grouped together in the “intervention group.” Indeed, we also don’t know what the “control” group did. These parents could have easily implemented a controlled-crying program for themselves using one of the myriad of books for parents on sleep training. Given the wide range of practices that likely occurred in both the “intervention” and “control” groups, I am again not surprised to see no significant difference.

Was the Intervention Actually Effective, Even in the Short Term? Accounting for the Hawthorne Effect

Another problematic aspect of this study has to do with the research design’s inability to account for the Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorne Effect was first noted by industrial psychologists who were testing the impact of minute changes in illumination on productivity in factory workers. When they raised the level, employees reported that it was “better” and productivity increased. When they lowered the level, it was also “better” and productivity increased.  In other words, any intervention was described as helpful. It’s basically a placebo effect for behavioral interventions.

The Hawthorne Effect could also be behind the positive results for the controlled-crying intervention. Earlier papers from this same research sample found lower rates of depression and better sleep among the mothers in the intervention group. Yet these results do not demonstrate that it was the controlled-crying technique per se that actually caused the effect. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the mothers appreciating that someone was listening to their concerns. Controlled crying was compared to “usual care.” A better test for the effectiveness of this technique would have been to compare it with another intervention (such as educating mothers about the developmental normality of infant waking at 8 to 10 months, and brainstorming about ways the mothers could get more rest and cope with fatigue). Given that the authors are actually recommending this technique, this standard of evidence is a minimum.

Does Controlled Crying Cause Long-term Change to Cortisol Levels? 

One concern that critics of controlled crying raise is that this technique changes infant physiology and alters the production of the stress hormone cortisol. To address this concern, the authors assessed cortisol levels of the children at two different points during a single day at age 6. They found no significant differences in cortisol levels at age 6 between the intervention and control groups, which further reassured them that their techniques were not harmful.

Unfortunately, these findings alone do not mean lack of physiological harm. To demonstrate lack of harm, the authors needed to measure cortisol levels during infancy: before, during, and after the intervention. Did controlled-crying elevate cortisol levels? How high were those levels and how long did they remain elevated? The authors did not measure this.

The question we need to ask is what happens to babies when their mothers do not respond to their cues? One way this has been studied is by examining the impact of maternal depression on infants. Maternal depression impairs mothers’ ability to respond to their infants’ cues. Infants whose mothers do not respond to their cues  tend to have elevated cortisol levels (Feldman et al., 2009). Even when non-response is temporary, babies still find it stressful. In the still-faced mother paradigm, mothers are asked to not respond to their infants’ cues in a laboratory setting. This research is designed to mimic the effects of maternal depression. The still-faced-mother experiments increase babies’ cortisol levels (Grant et al., 2009). And the effect of chronic maternal non-response can last long past infancy (Douglas & Harmer, 2011; Luijk et al., 2010; Murray, Halligan, Goodyer, & Herbert, 2010).

So why the concern about cortisol? Mainly, it’s this: cortisol is quite toxic to brain cells. If cortisol is elevated for short time, it likely causes no damage. But if cortisol levels are repeatedly elevated because the infants are experiencing long and repeated incidents of being ignored when they cry, it can be a problem. The brain is at its most vulnerable in the first five years, so soaking the developing brain in cortisol is not a good idea (Buss et al., 2012).

The authors of the current study claimed no effect of cortisol just because there was no difference between the groups at age 6. In my opinion, the lack of difference between the groups does not mean lack of harm. For some of these children, the effects of elevated cortisol in infancy could be more subtle. Cortisol levels likely returned to normal in the intervening five years, unless there was ongoing adversity. Unfortunately, cortisol that was elevated in infancy could have still affected vulnerable brain cells, even if current levels are normal. The measures Price et al. used were not particularly sensitive. And these effects would likely not show up without more sensitive measures.

What About Breastfeeding?

The final limitation of this study is rather stunning. Price et al. did not measure the effect of infant feeding method on sleep or maternal depression. Yet feeding method has a direct effect on both maternal sleep and postpartum depression, which are the two main factors the authors claim to address with their sleep intervention. This omission is particularly surprising given that Australia, the authors’ home country, has one of the highest rates of breastfeeding in the world. It is far from a marginal issue.

Recent studies have demonstrated that exclusively breastfeeding mothers get more sleep and are less likely to be depressed than their mixed- or formula-feeding counterparts. They take fewer minutes to fall asleep, sleep longer over the course of a night, and report more daytime energy and better physical health than their mixed- or formula-feeding counterparts (Doan, Gardiner, Gay, & Lee, 2007; Dorheim, Bondevik, Eberhard-Gran, & Bjorvatn, 2009a, 2009b; Kendall-Tackett, Cong, & Hale, 2011).

Given these findings, isn’t it strange that breastfeeding was not even enquired about, let alone controlled for? If the study was conducted in a country with low breastfeeding rates, this omission would be somewhat understandable. But it makes no sense from a study conducted in a country with one of the highest breastfeeding rates in the world.

Conclusion

So what can we take away from the Price et al. study? Should we recommend the controlled-crying technique to parents? Based on the limitations of this study, I do not recommend this approach. The sample size is small, the follow-up sample is missing the children most likely to be negatively affected, their assessment of their intervention did not account for the Hawthorne/placebo effect, they have not measured dose of the intervention, nor have they accounted for feeding method, which recent research has soundly demonstrated as being related to both variables that are of key interest: maternal fatigue and postpartum depression.

My objections to this approach are not new. When I first encountered the Price et al. study, I remembered a study this same group of researchers published 10 years ago in the British Medical Journal demonstrating that controlled crying lessened the risk of postpartum depression (Hiscock & Wake, 2002). I was specifically struck by this response to it from a German physician (Perl, 2002).

As a German, I am unhappy to find fairly undiluted ideas of militaristic Nazi infant care uncritically repeated by these Australian care providers. The Nazis understood very well the crucial effect of letting young babies cry on their future development and made this a central theme in their child care. As a scientist, I find it hard to believe that all of the results of mother-infant sleep research of the 1990s completely escaped the authors’ notice.

In closing their article, Price et al. stated that organizations, such as the Australian Breastfeeding Association, were unduly negative towards controlled-crying techniques and based their positions on research that had not been “updated since the mid-2000s.”

Thus, there is a pressing need to deliver evidence-based information to parents and health care providers, which could be achieved, in part, by updating position statements, policy documents, and training curricula to reflect our current findings that behavioral sleep techniques are both effective in the short- and medium-term and safe to use in the long-term (p. 8).

Given recent findings in neuroscience, childhood trauma and adversity, and breastfeeding and maternal sleep, which are not accounted for in the Price et  al. study, I’d respectfully advise the authors to do the same. I’d further urge healthcare providers who are considering recommending these techniques to consider the limitations to the current study and to consider alternative approaches that can meet the needs of both mother and baby.

References

Buss, C., Davis, E. P., Shahbaba, B., Pruessner, J. C., Head, K., & Sandman, C. A. (2012). Maternal cortisol over the course of pregnancy and subsequent child amygdala and hippocampus volumes and affecive problems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 109(20), E1312-E1319.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Adverse childhood experiences: Major findings  Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://www.cdc.gov/ace/findings.htm

Danese, A., Moffitt, T. E., Harrington, H., Milne, B. J., Polanczyk, G., Pariante, C. M., & Caspi, A. (2009). Adverse childhood experiences and adult risk factors for age-related disease: Depression, inflammation, and clustering of metabolic risk factors. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 163(12), 1135-1143.

Doan, T., Gardiner, A., Gay, C. L., & Lee, K. A. (2007). Breastfeeding increases sleep duration of new parents. Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing, 21(3), 200-206.

Dorheim, S. K., Bondevik, G. T., Eberhard-Gran, M., & Bjorvatn, B. (2009a). Sleep and depression in postpartum women: A population-based study. Sleep, 32(7), 847-855.

Dorheim, S. K., Bondevik, G. T., Eberhard-Gran, M., & Bjorvatn, B. (2009b). Subjective and objective sleep among depressed and non-depressed postnatal women. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia, 119, 128-136.

Douglas, J.-L., & Harmer, C.-J. (2011). Early morning cortisol response and emotional processing in adults exposed to postnatal depression in infancy. European Psychiatry, 26, 479-481.

Feldman, R., Granat, A., Pariente, C., Kanety, H., Kuint, J., & Gilboa-Schechtman, E. (2009). Maternal depression and anxiety across the postpartum year and infant social engagement, fear regulation, and stress reactivity. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 48(9), 919-927.

Grant, K.-A., McMahon, C., Austin, M.-P., Reilly, N., Leader, L., & Ali, S. (2009). Maternal prenatal anxiety, postnatal caregiving and infants’ cortisol responss to the still-face procedure. Developmental Psychobiology, 51, 625-637.

Hiscock, H., & Wake, M. (2002). Randomised controlled trial of behavioural infant sleep intervention to improve infant sleep and maternal mood. British Medical Journal, 324(7345), 1062-1065.

Kendall-Tackett, K. A., Cong, Z., & Hale, T. W. (2011). The effect of feeding method on sleep duration, maternal well-being, and postpartum depression. Clinical Lactation, 2(2), 22-26.

Luijk, M. P. C. M., Saridjan, N., Tharner, A., Van Ijzendoorn, M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Jaddoe, V. V. W., . . . Tiemeier, H. (2010). Attachment, depression, and cortisol: Deviant patterns in insecure-resistant and disorganized infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 52, 441-452.

Murray, L., Halligan, S. L., Goodyer, I., & Herbert, J. (2010). Disturbances in early parenting of depresssed mothers and cortisol secretion in offspring: A preliminary study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 122, 218-223.

Perl, F. M. (2002). Infant sleep intervention or Nazi drill? Rapid response to Hiscock & Wake. British Medical Journal. Retrieved from http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7345/1062?tab=responses

Price, A. M. H., Wake, M., Ukoumunne, O. G., & Hiscock, H. (2012). Five-year follow-up of harms and benefits of behavioral infant sleep intervention: Randomized trial. Pediatrics, 130(4). Retrieved from www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2011-3467

Shonkoff, J. P., Boyce, W. T., & McEwen, B. S. (2009). Neuroscience, molecular biology, and the childhood roots of health disparities: building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. JAMA, 301(21), 2252-2259. doi: 301/21/2252 [pii] 10.1001/jama.2009.754

About Kathleen Kendall- Tackett

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., IBCLC, FAPA is a health psychologist and board-certified lactation consultant. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Praeclarus Press, a new small press specializing in women’s health. She is a research associate at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire and a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University School of Medicine in Amarillo, Texas. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Clinical Lactation, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and is president-elect of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology. www.KathleenKendall-Tackett.com

 

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett Babies, Breastfeeding, Childbirth Education, Depression, Guest Posts, Infant Attachment, Maternal Mental Health, Parenting an Infant, Research Childbirth Education, crying it out, guest posts, infants, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, research, sleep

      In November 9, 2011, amid much fanfare and media attention, the city of Milwaukee unveiled their latest campaign to promote safe infant sleep.

 

The images are disturbing to say the least—they were designed that way. “Co-sleeping deaths are the most preventable form of infant death in this community,” Barrett said.  “Is it shocking? Is it provocative?” asked Baker, the health commissioner. “Yes. But what is even more shocking and provocative is that 30 developed and underdeveloped countries have better (infant death) rates than Milwaukee.”  A campaign such as this has a noble goal: to prevent infants from dying. But does this type of campaign keep infants safe?  The tragic answer is “no.” In less than two months after this campaign was launched, two more infants had died in Milwaukee in what the press described as “cosleeping deaths.” http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/ad-campaign-unveiled-as-another-cosleeping-death-is-announced-s030073-133552808.html

On January 3, 2012, WITI-TV, the affiliate Fox News in Milwaukee reported this:

One-Month-Old Infant Dies in Co-Sleeping Incident

Medical Examiner’s Report Says Baby Was Sleeping On Floor with Three Other Children

     The second death was of a 10-day-old infant who had died while sleeping with three other children on an adult bed. http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-20111118-sleep-message,0,4692090.story  Neither of these infant sleep locations was safe and should not be classified as “bedsharing deaths.” The sad take-away we can learn from these cases is that “simple messages,” may be headline-grabbing. But in the end, they do not communicate what parents need to know to keep their infants safe while sleeping.

 In the same month as the Milwaukee campaign was launched, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued their new policy statement and follow-up technical report (American Academy of Pediatrics & Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, 2011a, 2011b) on infant sleep-related deaths. In their press release, they stated that they were “expanding [the AAP guidelines] on safe sleep for babies, with additional information for parents on creating a safe environment for their babies to sleep.” http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;105/3/650

When I first read through this statement, it didn’t seem to differ all that much from previous statements, particularly on the issue many of us are interested in—namely, their recommendations regarding bedsharing. That recommendation did not really change. But in reading the full statement, there were some interesting, and dare I say hopeful, developments.

   The AAP Policy Statement (2011a) lists their Levels A, B, and C recommendations. A-Level recommendations are those with the strongest evidence. Number 3 of their Level-A Recommendations is that parents and infants room share, but not bedshare (p. 1031). They based their recommendation on the results of a new meta-analysis of 11 studies comparing 2,404 cases where infants died (28.8% of whom bedshared) with 6,495 healthy controls (13.3% of whom bedshared). They calculated the odds ratio and found that it was 2.89 (95% CI, 1,99-4.18).¹  Based on their calculation, bedsharing increased the risk of SIDS by almost three times. But wait…..The authors noted that there was “some heterogeneity in the analysis” (p. 45). The heterogeneity in question referred to the fact that several of the studies included infant deaths that took place on a chair or couch (a situation that greatly increases the risk of infant death), not just those that took place in an adult bed with a non-smoking, non-impaired parent.

     This issue has, of course, dogged the bedsharing debate for more than a decade. The authors themselves acknowledged that this was a difficulty (Vennemann et al., 2012).

Only recent studies have disentangled infants sleeping with adults in a parental bed from infants sleeping with an adult on a sofa. This is certainly a limitation of the individual studies and hence of the meta-analysis (p. 47).

 But hopeful sign number 1: the AAP statement specifically differentiates between bedsharing and the broader term, “cosleeping,” which often includes all deaths that take place outside of a crib. I hope that this distinction will trickle down into future research studies.

 And there’s more. Vennemann et al. (2012) noted that bedsharing was much more hazardous with a smoking mother (OR=6.27; 95% CI, 3.94-9.99) than a non-smoking mother (OR=1.66; 95% CI, 0.91-3.01).  So there was still some increased risk if an infant slept with a non-smoking mother. But remember that this analysis included studies where babies died on couches and chairs. The next analysis was by age of infant. For infants <12 weeks, the odds ratio was 10.37 (95% CI, 4.44-24.21). But for older infants, 1.02 (95% CI, 0.49-2.12),  i.e., no increased risk.  Another analysis looked at whether bedsharing was routine. They found that if bedsharing was routine, the odds ratio was 1.42 (95% CI, 0.85-2.38). If bedsharing was not routine, but happened on the last night, the odds ratio was 2.18 (95% CI, 1.45-2.38). The authors noted that the risk was NOT significantly elevated in the routine-bedsharing group (although I note that there does seem to be some elevation in risk, probably due to the studies that included couch sharing).

     The next interesting issue is regarding their recommendations on chair or couch sharing with an infant. This has been a long-standing concern of mine due to the massively increased risk of infant death if parents fall asleep with infants on these surfaces. In fact, I have spoken with quite a few parents who routinely do this because they want to avoid bedsharing. Here’s what AAP says.

Because of the extremely high risk of SIDS and suffocation on couches and armchairs, infants should not be fed on a couch or armchair when there is a high risk that the parent might fall asleep (AAP, 2011a, p. 1033).

Further, they acknowledge—and seem to affirm—feeding babies in bed, but putting them in their own cribs for sleep.

Therefore, if the infant is brought into the bed for feeding, comforting, and bonding, the infant should be returned to the crib when the parent is ready for sleep (AAP, 2011a, p. 1033).  

     Unfortunately, this statement does not acknowledge that it’s quite easy to fall asleep in bed: 70% of mothers in our study who fed their babies in bed said that they fall asleep there (Kendall-Tackett, Cong, & Hale, 2010). And many a new parent would argue that that is precisely the point. There needs to be some recognition of, and planning for, that contingency.  But other than that, I am happy to see this recommendation included.

     The final point that I would like discuss is the role of breastfeeding in SIDS prevention, and how bedsharing has a role in sustaining breastfeeding. For example, Helen Ball (2007) found, in her longitudinal study of 97 initially breastfed infants, that breastfeeding for at least a month was significantly associated with regular bedsharing.

     We, in the breastfeeding world, have been saying this for a very long time (Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, 2008; McKenna & McDade, 2005; McKenna & Volpe, 2007). But now the SIDS researchers are saying it too. For example, Vennemann et al. (2009) found that breastfeeding reduced the risk of SIDS by 50%. (Yes, this is the same Vennemann whose meta-analysis was cited above.) Regarding breastfeeding, Vennemann et al. (2009) said the following.

We recommend including the advice to breastfeed through 6 months of age in sudden infant death syndrome risk-reduction messages (p. e406).

     Peter Blair and colleagues (Blair, Heron, & Fleming, 2010) went further and highlighted the role of bedsharing in maintaining breastfeeding. (Peter Blair is also a co-author on Vennemann et al., 2012.)

Advice on whether bed sharing should be discouraged needs to take into account the important relationship with breastfeeding (p. 1119).

     So I am hopeful that we may be reaching a possible accord on this issue. While the AAP will probably never come straight out and recommend bedsharing, it would be helpful if they acknowledged that it will likely continue, and that our role is to help all parents sleep as safely as possible–either with or near their infants. Such a statement is possible. I’d like to close with the words from the Canadian Paediatric Society (Canadian Paediatric Society & Committee, 2004/2011).

Based on the available scientific evidence, the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends that for the first year of life, the safest place for babies to sleep is in their own crib, and in the parent’s room for the first six month. However, the Canadian Paediatric Society also acknowledges that some parents will, nonetheless, choose to share a bed with their child…..

The recommended practice of independent sleeping will likely continue to be the preferred sleeping arrangement for infants in Canada, but a significant proportion of families will still elect to sleep together…….

The risk of suffocation and entrapment in adult beds or unsafe cribs will need to be addressed for both practices to achieve any reduction in this devastating adverse event (emphasis added).

Do you talk about safe sleep in your classes? How do you address the risks and benefits of bedsharing?  Have new parents come to you after birth expressing concern about where their newborn is sleeping?  Share your experiences with talking to new parents about parenting a sleeping newborn, always a big discussion topic in the first weeks and months. – SM

 _____________________

[1]An odds ratio of 1.0 indicates no increased risk. Above 1.0 means increased risk. The higher the number, the worse the risk.

_____________________

References

Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. (2008). ABM clinical protocol #6: Guideline on co-sleeping and breastfeeding. Breastfeeding Medicine, 3(1), 38-43.

American Academy of Pediatrics, & Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (2011a). Policy Statement: SIDS and other sleep-related deaths: Expansion of recommendations for a safe infant sleeping environment. Pediatrics, 128(5), 1030-1039.

American Academy of Pediatrics, & Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (2011b). Technical Report: SIDSand other sleep-related deaths: Expansion of recommendations for a safe infant sleeping environment. Pediatrics, 128(5), e1-e27.

Ball, H. L. (2007). Bed-sharing practices of initially breastfed infants in the first 6 months of life. Infant & Child Development, 16, 387-401.

Blair, P. S., Heron, J., & Fleming, P. J. (2010). Relationship between bed sharing and breastfeeding: Longitudinal, population-based analysis. Pediatrics, 126(5), e1119-e1126.

Canadian Paediatric Society, & Committee, C. P. (2004/2011). Recommendations for safe sleeping environments for infants and children. Retrieved from http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/cp/cp04-02.htm#Recommendations

Kendall-Tackett, K. A., Cong, Z., & Hale, T. W. (2010). Mother-infant sleep locations and nighttime feeding behavior: U.S. data from the Survey of Mothers’ Sleep and Fatigue. Clinical Lactation, 1(1), 27-30.

McKenna, J. J., & McDade, T. W. (2005). Why babies should never sleep alone: A review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing, and breastfeeding. Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, 6, 134-152.

McKenna, J. J., & Volpe, L. E. (2007). Sleeping with baby: An internet-based sampling of parental experiences, choices, perceptions, and interpretations in a Western Industrialized context. Infant & Child Development, 16, 359-386.

Vennemann, M. M., Bajanowski, T., Brinkmann, B., Jorch, G., Yucesan, K., Sauerland, C., . . . the GeSID Study Group. (2009). Does breastfeeding reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Pediatrics, 123, e406-e410.

Vennemann, M. M., Hense, H.-W., Bajanowski, T., Blair, P. S., Complojer, C., Moon, R. Y., & Kiechl-Kohlendorfer, U. (2012). Bedsharing and the risk of sudden infant death syndrome: Can we resolve the debate? Journal of Pediatrics, 160, 44-48.

 About Kathleen Kendall-Tackett

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., IBCLC, RLC, FAPA is a health psychologist, IBCLC, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Lactation, President-elect of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Trauma Psychology, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and owner of Praeclarus Press. More information on the mother-infant sleep debate can be found at http://praeclaruspress.com/sense-sensibility.html

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett Babies, Breastfeeding, Childbirth Education, Guest Posts, Infant Attachment, Newborns, Parenting an Infant breastfeeding, cosleeping, guest post, infants, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Parenting an Infant, SIDS

In my previous post, I reviewed the findings from our recent study. Our results suggested that breastfeeding mothers got more sleep, were less fatigued, and reported better physical health than mothers who were mixed- or formula-feeding.  We also found that reported depression was significantly lower in the mothers who were breastfeeding only compared with those who either mixed- or formula-fed. [Click here to read the original article.]

In this post, I want to suggest some strategies for working with a very fatigued breastfeeding mother.  Most of us can probably recall what it was like to feel so tired that we thought we were going to die if we didn’t get some sleep. That can happen even when a mother is exclusively breastfeeding. So the question is what should you do? When a mother is in that state, we want to address her fatigue immediately as it increases her depression. Fortunately, there are some things you can suggest that will help.

 

Some Approaches You Might Suggest

• Brainstorm with the mother on some strategies to help her cope with fatigue (e.g., encourage her to accept offers of help). She may have been reluctant to accept help from others, assuming that she should do everything herself.  As health professionals, we can let her know that she doesn’t have to do everything by herself and that accepting help will be both good for her and good for her baby.

 

• Treat depression. Depression can have a severe and negative impact on sleep quality, reducing the amount of slow-wave (deep) sleep that mothers receive. This will make her feel more tired during the day. Treating depression will likely improve her sleep. Indeed, one of the first symptoms that antidepressants address is sleep quality. So medications may prove helpful in this case.

 

• Use cognitive-behavioral sleep interventions [click here to learn more]. Non-pharmacologic treatments for depression also work, including cognitive-behavioral therapy.  This is another option that addresses both depression and sleep issues.

 

• Use medications specifically for sleep.  Sleep medications may be another alternative. Most are compatible with breastfeeding. However, any mother taking a medication that makes her sleepy should not bedshare.

 

• A history of psychological trauma can also cause a number of sleep issues. If mother has a trauma history, The Post-Traumatic Insomnia Workbook will likely be a helpful resource. In addition, some medications that are used for sleep are also helpful in that they address trauma-related sleep issues. Some examples are the SARIs (serotonin antagonist reuptake inhibiters, such as trazodone) and the atypical antipsychotics (such as olanzapine).

Rule Out Physical Conditions

Severe fatigue may also be caused by an underlying physical condition. To rule those out, the following tests may be helpful.

 

• Blood work to rule out hypothyroidism, anemia, autoimmune disease, low-grade infection, or vitamin D deficiency
  • TSH, T3, T4 for thyroid function
  • Complete Blood Count for anemia and/or possible infection
  • Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate for inflammation. This is a sensitive, but non-specific test that will measure whether some type of inflammatory process is going on. An abnormal finding can indicate an infection, autoimmune disease, or even cancer. An abnormal finding should lead to further testing to narrow down a more-specific cause. But this can be a helpful screening tool.
  • Vitamin D level to rule out a possible deficiency. Many mothers are deficient in vitamin D. Supplementing will likely improve her health and decrease her level of daily fatigue.
  • Possible sleep study to rule out sleep-breathing and sleep-movement disorders. This is not a strategy for every mother. But if other conditions have been ruled out, it can be helpful to determine whether she has either sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome.

If limiting nighttime feedings becomes necessary to preserve a women’s mental health, a stretch of 4-5 hours will be easier to implement, will meet mental health goals, and will be less disrupting to breastfeeding than trying to avoid breastfeeding for an entire night. Some of the current recommendations of avoiding nighttime feeding for 8 hours or more may lead to mastitis in a breastfeeding mother, or possibly a permanent disruption in her milk production for that pregnancy. In any case, before limiting nighttime feedings, mothers need to give informed consent about how these interventions might impact breastfeeding. It’s not fair to mothers to implement these types of programs without letting them know about possible negative effects of them.

In conclusion, severe fatigue in mothers is something that we should address promptly because it dramatically increases their depression risk. However, trying to address fatigue by avoiding nighttime breastfeeding or advising a mother to supplement with formula will likely prove counterproductive. Fortunately, there are strategies that can help. Our job is to help mothers find the best strategy for them.

 

Posted by:  Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, PhD,  IBCLC, FAPA, who is a health psychologist and board-certified lactation consultant. She is clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas. She is owner and editor-in-chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women’s health. She can be contacted at www.KathleenKendall-Tackett.com.

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In a previous post, I described the results of recent studies that indicated that exclusively breastfeeding mothers appear to get more sleep than their mixed- and exclusively formula-feeding counterparts. That blog post generated quite a bit of comment. For many of us, the findings of these recent studies seemed completely counterintuitive—how could the breastfeeding mothers get more sleep? I have to admit, this research changed my mind. For years, like many breastfeeding researchers, I assumed that breastfeeding mothers got less sleep. But research over the past five years has proven that these assumptions were wrong.

In this post, I’ve summarized the findings from our study (Kendall-Tackett, Cong, & Hale, 2011). These findings were published in the journal Clinical Lactation. Our sample was 6410 mothers of babies 0-12 months old. The mothers ranged in age from 13-50 and they completed an online survey with 253 items that were all about their sleep patterns, infant sleep location, the mothers’ physical and emotional health, their pregnancies and birth experiences, their trauma history, and detailed questions about how they feed their infants. For these analyses, we asked a summary question about feeding method: “Since your baby was born, did you breastfeed, formula feed, or both breast and formula feed?” We then examined several indices of mothers’ sleep and well-being. We found that on all measures, breastfeeding mothers reported significantly better functioning. They were getting more sleep, felt better during the day, and were less depressed. Interestingly, there was no significant difference between the mothers who were either mixed- or formula-feeding on any measure. This suggests a threshold effect for breastfeeding: that mothers who supplemented did not have the same physiological benefits as mothers who only breastfed. The babies, obviously, benefit from receiving their mothers’ milk. But the mothers get more physiological benefits if they can breastfeed exclusively. Below is a summary of our findings.
Breastfeeding mothers reported sleeping significantly more hours. Two previous studies found that mothers’ reported hours of sleep is a better predictor of lowered PPD risk than measures of mothers’ “actual” hours of sleep recorded via polysomnograph.
Figure 1. Number of hours mothers report that they sleep.

 

 

Consistent with getting more sleep, breastfeeding mothers reported more daily energy and better overall physical health.

 

Fig. 2: Mothers’ Daily Energy on a Five-Point Scale

 

Fig. 3: Mothers’ Overall Rating of Their Physical Health

Consistent with previous studies, breastfeeding mothers also had lower risk for depression as measured on the PHQ-2.
Fig. 4: Maternal depression

 

I would like to anticipate a couple of questions based on questions I received from the previous post. First, the breastfeeding mothers were not all bedsharing. In fact, they were pretty evenly divided between bedsharing and baby in a crib in another room. [Click here to read this article.] I suspect that these findings would be even stronger if we only included the bedsharing mothers. Second, many readers wondered whether we were trying to prove causation with correlation. We were not. We used analysis of variance to examine mean group differences. Consistent with our findings, we can report that, for example, breastfeeding mothers reported a significantly higher number of hours of nightly sleep.
The findings from our study are quite consistent with previous studies, and they suggest that when mothers start supplementing, that they actually get less sleep. So that strategy that her family, and many professionals, are likely to suggest (i.e., have someone else give the baby a bottle, or have the mother give the baby a bottle herself) could actually make things worse. In the next post, I will give some suggestions about what you can do to help a mother who is overly fatigued.

 

Reference
Kendall-Tackett, K. A., Cong, Z., & Hale, T. W. (2011). The effect of feeding method on sleep duration, maternal well-being, and postpartum depression. Clinical Lactation, 2(2), 22-26.

 

 

Posted by:  Kathleen Kendall-Tackett,PhD, IBCLC, FAPA, is a health psychologist and board-certified lactation consultant. She is clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas. She is owner and editor-in-chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women’s health. She can be contacted at www.KathleenKendall-Tackett.com.

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