Why Sleep Is So Important During Pregnancy

We all would agree that sleep is essential to our lives, and that without a proper night of sleep, we would not be able to function well the following day. However, and for some reason that I still do not understand, there are specific stages of the life in which we all assume that having poor sleep is “normal” and something that we should just deal with, as this is “what it is." Examples of these stages are childhood and pregnancy – and in this post I am going to mainly focus on the pregnancy period.

I remember that when I was pregnant with my daughter, one the first things that I heard from a lovely close friend (after “congratulations," of course) was to forget about having proper sleep at night—and to be honest, this was not only her message based on her own experience; it was a message I heard repeatedly throughout my pregnancy from different people. As a sleep researcher who studies the impact that sleep problems have on the development of mental health problems, I must admit that this was quite a “scary” message. Based on my own research, this meant that by default I would be at risk for mental health problems...

Therefore, one of the main goals I aimed to achieve through my research is to raise awareness of how important sleep is, but most importantly, that sleep is something we can modify and that, by adopting good sleep hygiene practices, we can improve our overall health, well-being and quality of life.

There is existing evidence suggesting that sleep problems during pregnancy may lead to the development of a range of problems in the newborn and subsequently in the development of the child. For example, in a couple of studies that I conducted in Finland, we found that insomnia symptoms in mothers during pregnancy were associated with the occurrence of sleep problems in the infant at the age of 3 months; and also that children of mothers who have an evening chronotype (i.e., "night owls") are at highest risk of developing sleep problems during the first two years of life. In these two studies, we only focused on sleep problems as the developmental aspect to explore in the born children. However, we also expect that sleep problems during pregnancy would have an impact on a wider range of developmental aspects of the born child, such as emotional problems, a more difficult temperament, or delayed motor or cognitive development. This is something that we still need to explore more and something that we are aiming to investigate in the next few years; hopefully I will be able to provide further updates in this space.

The reasons why sleep problems during pregnancy lead to developmental problems in the child are still not clear, but some potential biological mechanisms have been proposed to support the relationship. For instance, disturbed sleep during pregnancy could interfere with the rhythm and amplitude of melatonin secretion, which subsequently is involved in the formation of normal foetal sleep patterns and circadian rhythms. However, we still need further studies (especially longitudinal studies in which mothers and their children are followed up over a prolonged period of time) to understand in more detail the mechanisms explaining the associations between sleep problems during pregnancy and a child’s poor development.

It is also important to highlight that a relevant aspect of why sleep problems during pregnancy are of crucial importance is that these are actually modifiable factors, which means that we can improve our sleep and, consequently, prevent a range of adverse effects associated with prenatal sleep problems (such as sleep problems in their children, or mental health problems in the mothers postnatally). For instance, there are a number of sleep interventions (e.g., sleep hygiene practices, behavioural interventions) that have been proven to improve sleep; these interventions could be effective in preventing the development of a range of adverse outcomes in the mother (e.g., postnatal mental health problems) and in the child (e.g., sleep problems in infancy). Following this, and considering the negative outcomes associated with sleep problems during pregnancy indicated above, one of our main focuses in the next years is to implement sleep interventions during pregnancy not only to improve sleep in pregnant women but also to prevent and/or reduce mental health problems and other adverse outcomes in the mothers and their children.

But not only would experiencing sleep problems during pregnancy have an impact on the development of the born child, but the sleep problems that the child might experience could have a long-term effect in the development of a wide range of poor outcomes, like mental health problems. This is a topic for another post (or several).