Extend Your Maternity Leave to Catch-up on Some Lost Sleep: Research

Most women are sleep deprived and feel exhausted even four months after giving birth, finds a study.

Inadequate and disturbed sleep is a common aspect of motherhood. Feeding babies and changing nappies in the middle of the night is exhausting and leaves women sleep deprived. Experts at the Queensland University of Technology advise new mums not to rush back to  work in haste within months after having a baby.

The researchers examined sleep cycle and quality of 33 healthy Australian women post-childbirth in 15 minutes increment, six, 12 and 18 weeks after delivery. Most women reported waking at least two times in late night hours to nurse their infants and daily slept for almost seven hour and 20 minutes on average. These participants slept an hour more than American mothers who usually get less than seven hours of peaceful shut eye.

Majority of Australian women said they were very tired despite following a consistent sleep regime at 18 weeks after giving birth. Chronic sleep deprivation affects mood, mental status and overall well-being of women who have just transitioned into motherhood and resuming their jobs without making up for the lost hours of sleep can affect them negatively.

"What we found was that inevitably, new mothers will wake in the night to attend to their infant and the number of times they wake remains consistent during the first 18 post-partum weeks,"said Ashleigh Filtness, study author and researcher at the Queensland University of Technology, reports the Daily Mail.

The study results recommend women to rethink their decision about hurrying back to their professional lives after becoming mothers. The authors suggest that women extend their maternity leaves and focus on improving sleep quality and duration to prevent conditions like extreme tiredness, mood fluctuations, poor attention span, anxiety and impaired decision making skills.

"Our findings bring into question whether four months parental leave is sufficient to ensure daytime sleepiness has diminished to a manageable level before returning to work. It is important when developing regulations for parental leave entitlements that policy makers take into account the high prevalence of excessive daytime sleepiness experienced by new mothers," said Filtness, reports the Daily Mail.

"With the birth of every baby the new mother must adjust to the demands of parenting and one aspect of that is to remain functional while experiencing potentially severe sleep disruption," adds Fitlness.

More information is available online in the journal PLoS ONE.