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COPYRIGHT 2002 Mothering Magazine
The image of a sleeping infant personifies tranquility and serenity. Most parents have experienced that unique sense of happiness when they gaze into the face of their sleeping infant. The advertising industry certainly has capitalized on this image, using phrases like "sleep like a baby."
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But what does it mean to sleep like a baby? Does an infant stay in these peaceful positions throughout the night? What happens when nobody is watching? Does being alone make a difference? These were some of the questions prompting a study of mother-infant sleep behaviors in solitary and bedsharing conditions. (1)
The study used the same mother-infant pairs as those used in the original bedsharing study conducted for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2,3) That original study looked specifically at the physiological aspects of infants in solitary and bedsharing conditions; our study focused only on the social and behavioral aspects of solitary and bedsharing mother-infant pairs.
During the behavioral portion of the study, we explored and compared sleep behaviors of routinely solitary and bedsharing mother-infant pairs under both solitary and bedsharing conditions. The observations were made from videotaped recordings, over a three-night span, of nocturnal sleep behaviors and sounds from the mother-infant pairs in solitary and bedsharing conditions.
Significant differences were observed between infants placed in solitary versus bedsharing conditions in the sleep laboratory. Infants in solitary night conditions were more restless (see Figure 1). They revealed continuous large and small limb movements (e.g., arms extended, legs kicking, back arching, full-body stretching), often accompanied by repetitive side-to-side head rotations. This physical activity tended...
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