Affiliations:
Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery Department of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran
Correspondence:
[*]
Address for correspondence: Sussan Saatsaz, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery department of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran. Tel.: +98 9113253258; s.saatsaz@mazums.ac.ir.
Abstract: BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Infants’ sleep disorders and parents’ insufficient sleep are common problems in the infant care. The current study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of infant massage on infants’ night-time sleep condition and mothers’ sleep quality. PROCEDURES:140 infants were randomly put into two different groups, experimental group with fifteen-minute bedtime messages for two weeks and the control group with normal infant routine care. The Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire, a personal information submission form, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index for the mothers were the tools used to gather data in this study. RESULTS:Infants in experimental group showed meaningful differences in variables such as, sleep latency (P < 0001, eta = 0.099), number of night waking (P = 0.03, eta = 0.027) and longest continuous sleep period (P = 0.03, eta = 0.026). As for other variables no meaningful differences were observed. There wasn’t meaningful difference in the mother’s overall night-time sleep quality between the two groups (P = 0.184, eta = 0.012) except for the duration of the mother’s night-time sleep (P = 0.028, eta = 0.026) and the reduction of maternal sleep disorder (P = 0.020 eta = 0.029). CONCLUSION:The findings indicated that infants’ bedtime massages would improve some of the sleep markers of mothers and infants, and therefore, can be suggested as a practical, harmless, and cost-free method to improve sleep.
Keywords: Infant massage, quality of sleep, mother, night-time sleep
