Many possibilities for gifts come to mind to acknowledge Mother?s Day for new mothers?family and friends think about flowers or brunch. But because inadequate rest is often a key source of distress for mothers, we need to consider giving mothers the gift of sleep.
When infants are consistently unable to go back to sleep after waking up at night without parental help, mothers? sleep is disrupted. This has been linked with fatigue, worse maternal mood and more negative feelings about parenting directed at infants during the day.
It can get worse too: prolonged sleep disruption is associated with mothers? higher risk for developing mood disorders such as postpartum depression and anxiety.
Postpartum parental sleep
A large population-based German study found that parental satisfaction with sleep declined sharply during the first postpartum year with greater declines for mothers than fathers. Parental sleep time and satisfaction also don?t recover to pre-baby norms until well after infancy. Some mothers struggle with fragmented and inefficient sleep because they must tend to infants who wake up frequently at night, and end up spending more time in bed trying to fall asleep. Other mothers are not able to meet their minimum sleep needs at all (seven hours per night as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation). Many mothers experience both of these problems. Some mothers find it hard to fall asleep at night because they feel anxious about their baby awakening at any moment.
Inf...