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- Published on: 22 June 2021
- Published on: 22 June 2021Normal infant sleep behaviours
Dear Editor,
We note with interest the conclusions made in the longitudinal cohort review published by Cook et al1 linking frequent night wakings in infancy with emotional disorders in later childhood. Our analysis of the paper questions whether the medical profession is overmedicalising normal sleep behaviours without fully identifying what is within normal limits.
Multiple potential confounders were not adjusted for in the analysis, including but not limited to: method of feeding, neonatal and infant medical history, sleep environment (co-sleeping and bedsharing) or the proportion of parents implementing sleep training methods. Additionally, statistical significance for these conclusions was reached by comparing the babies labelled with with ‘persistent severe sleep problems’ (19.4%) with those classed as ‘settled sleepers’ (23.7%), rather than the 56.0% of babies labelled with ‘moderate sleep problems’. Over half of the cohort were repeatedly waking at night, confirming that this is a common feature of normal infant behaviour. This paper provides a much-needed opportunity to discuss our social expectations of infant sleeping patterns and the increasing risk of overmedicalising normal sleep behaviours.
Modern western culture necessitates that adults sleep at night in order to function at work during the day. Societal changes over the last century have normalised the idea that babies too should sleep through the night, and this has slipped into the id...
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None declared.