Archival ReportShould Neonates Sleep Alone?
Section snippets
MNS in Primates
Dettling et al. (11) introduced an early adversity protocol wherein common marmoset monkeys experience daily 30- to 120-minute sessions of MNS from the 2nd to 28th day of life (total separation = 9 hours). Using this schedule, which approximates some human neonatal care (12), they found that MNS induced acute increases in urinary cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. After MNS, neonates spent more time in the suckling position, displayed less social play, and made more distress
Hidden Interactions in Humans
Pregnancy leads to endocrine priming of the brain and parturition triggers the expression of maternal and neonatal behaviors that are highly conserved across species (19). In humans, Widstrom et al. (20) and Winberg (21) describe how babies placed naked between their mother's breasts immediately after birth display stereotyped prefeeding behavior, comprising spontaneous sucking and rooting movements followed by crawling with their arms and pushing with their feet to locate the breast, attach to
Methods and Materials
Nineteen normal healthy full-term neonates (37+ weeks gestation) born by cesarean participated in a within-subject design. Mothers had no psychiatric/neurological history or physical complications and all babies had good Apgar scores (Table 1). Maternal-neonate dyads were a convenience sample by virtue of mothers staying 3 days in hospital postcesarean. Routine postnatal ward care for well neonates during sleep is loose swaddling in open bassinettes next to mother's bed. Mothers gave written
Results
Mothers ranged in age from 17 to 40 years (mean 27 ± 7.6), mean gravidity 2.6, range 1 to 5. Five had undergone cesarean previously and in five cases fetal distress was part of the cesarean indication. All 5-minute Apgar scores were ≥ 9 and there were no postnatal complications. The mean birth weight of the babies was 3295 ± 437g and their age when studied ranged from 42 to 74 hours (mean 53 ± 9.3). Subject details and sleep duration results across place are summarized in Table 1.
Discussion
We compared HRV power while controlling for sleep state and duration in 2-day-old babies across SSC and MNS. Results show a 176% increase in combined high- and low-frequency HRV power indicative of robust autonomic activation (44, 45) during sleep as a whole in MNS compared with SSC. Prior evidence comparing HRV across SSC and MNS is extremely limited and mostly confounded by a critical lack of control for level of arousal. Begum et al. (51) found significantly decreased LF and HF HRV power in
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2022, Infant Behavior and DevelopmentCitation Excerpt :For example, skin-to-skin contact in premature neonates has been shown to have long term effects on physiologic organisation and behaviour control, whilst physiologic organisation in the neonatal period has also been shown to impact an infant’s ability to successfully engage in rhythmic adult-infant dialogues as they grow (Feldman et al., 2014; Feldman, 2006). These findings are supported by evidence suggesting that maternal-neonate separation dramatically increases autonomic activity and greatly decreases quiet sleep duration - quiet sleep being closely related with cortical organisation and neuronal reorganisation processes (Eiselt et al., 2001; Milde et al., 2011; Morgan et al., 2011). Skin-to-skin contact is also important for neonatal temperature regulation, with it having a significant impact on both core and peripheral temperature, not only during the state of skin-to-skin contact but also during subsequence separation (Bystrova et al., 2003; Fransson et al., 2005).
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