Does an Infant's Sleeping Through the Night Make a Difference? DreamOn! by Lewis First MD, MS, Editor in Chief, Pediatrics

How often do families tell us they are concerned because their infant of 6 months of age or older is still notsleeping through the night? Why is this important?  Is sleep associated with the child's development?  Pennestriet al. (0.1542/peds.2017-4330) decided to answer these questions in a new study of 388 infants in a longitudinalcohort whose sleep habits and development were assessed at 6 and 12 months of age based on maternalreports and developmental testing.  You may be surprised to learn that using a definition of 6 hours of sleep as"uninterrupted," 27.9% of 6 and 12-month-olds were still not sleeping through the night, and if you make 8 hoursthe definition of "uninterrupted sleep," then the percentage not sleeping increases to 57%.  What does thatmean for the psychomotor and mental development of these children who were not sleeping through the night? Nothing-in that developmental testing did not reveal any differences between those who slept soundly andthose who did not.  In addition, the authors noted that maternal mood was also not affected by shorter or longerperiods of uninterrupted sleep. The only difference noted was that infants who slept through the night had astatistically significant lower rate of breastfeeding. 

So what does this mean?  Should we stop helping families try to find ways to get their infants to sleep throughthe night?  To answer that question, we asked sleep specialists Drs. Jodi Mindell and Melisa Moore to provide acommentary about the implications of this study and its findings (10.1542/peds.2018-2589).  The authors notethat there are a number of studies that show opposite findings (i.e. where sleep duration does seem to beassociated with development) but also comment on the differences in a number of factors in each of thesestudies that might be the reason for differences found. In addition, they speculate on why duration ofuninterrupted sleep may or may not make a long-term difference, but still might be playing a role in short termday to day differences in behavior and mood for an infant and for the parent who is called up in the middle of thenight to feed or sooth that infant.  You won't fall asleep reading either the study or commentary, so link to bothand learn more.

Factors Associated With Choice of Infant Sleep Position●

Nocturnal Video Assessment of Infant Sleep Environments●

INSIGHT Responsive Parenting Intervention and Infant Sleep●

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