Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To explore relationships between impaired sleep and well-being in mothers with low-birth-weight infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.

DESIGN:

Cross-sectional descriptive exploratory design.

SETTING:

Neonatal intensive care unit in metropolitan Atlanta, GA.

PARTICIPANTS:

Twenty second-week postpartum, first-time mothers who had a low-birth-weight infant hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit.

METHODS:

Self-report data were collected for sleep, fatigue, depression, and well-being. Total sleep time, wake after sleep onset, circadian activity rhythms, and light exposure were measured using a wrist actigraph.

RESULTS:

Mothers reported clinically significant sleep disturbance and fatigue severity. Actigraphy showed the average nighttime total sleep time was less than 7 hours with 19%+/-2.2% wake after sleep onset, and the total daytime sleep was more than an hour. Mothers also experienced moderate depressive symptoms. Maternal well-being as measured by the Medical Outcomes Short Form-36, version 2 was approximately 1 SD below the mean scores of age-matched women in the general U.S. population.

CONCLUSION:

Mothers of hospitalized low-birth-weight infants are vulnerable. The presence of sleep disturbances and negative physical and mental health indicators warrants further study. Intervention is needed to promote sleep for new mothers during postpartum recovery, especially mothers who are dealing with a medically ill infant.