Expectant parents' experience with fatigue and sleep during pregnancy.

Birth

Parent/Child Administration, Education, and Science Department, University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Nursing, Lincoln Division 68588-0620, USA.

Published: March 1997

Background: Although both expectant mothers and expectant fathers complain of fatigue during the last trimester of pregnancy, studies have focused exclusively on mothers. This pilot study examined parents' levels of morning or evening fatigue, number of uninterrupted sleep periods and length of sleep during the last trimester of pregnancy; and the relationship of sleep to parents' reports of fatigue.

Methods: Data were collected from 24 midwestern, nulliparous couples, who completed the Visual Analog Scale for Fatigue each morning and each evening on 4 consecutive days during the last trimester. Concurrently, the couples recorded sleep and wake periods in an activity diary.

Results: Expectant mothers but not expectant fathers reported increasing levels of fatigue, especially morning fatigue, as the pregnancy progressed. Expectant fathers and mothers did not differ either in the night-time mean number of minutes of sleep obtained, or in the mean number of night-time uninterrupted 90-minute sleep cycles obtained. Fatigue and sleep were not significantly related for either mothers or fathers.

Conclusions: These findings support the multidimensional nature of fatigue and indicate a need for perinatal health caregivers to develop individualized interventions for mothers during the last trimester of pregnancy. Fathers should also participate in future research of factors influencing the prenatal and postpartum experience.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-536x.1997.tb00336.xDOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

expectant fathers
12
trimester pregnancy
12
fatigue
8
sleep
8
fatigue sleep
8
expectant mothers
8
mothers expectant
8
morning evening
8
fatigue morning
8
expectant
6

Similar Publications

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship of sharenting with variables that are theoretically related with the concept. Sharenting includes the basic motivation to share parental practices with others and can be associated with social comparison and parental selfefficacy. In this context, we hypothesized that the social comparison could be a mediating variable between parental self-efficacy and sharing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Variation in reproductive success is a fundamental prerequisite for sexual selection to act upon a trait. Assessing such variation is crucial in understanding a species' mating system and offers insights into population growth. Parentage analyses in cetaceans are rare, and the underlying forces of sexual selection acting on their mating behaviours remain poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this study, I report an unexpected case of a Holstein calf that developed horns even though the sire was homozygous and the dam was heterozygous for polledness. After verifying and confirming the correct parentage, the parents and offspring were genotyped with the Illumina EuroG_MD BeadChip and the SNPs in the polled region on chromosome 1 were evaluated. In addition, the father was sequenced with next generation sequencing to identify possible, previously unknown variants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To investigate primiparous women's partners for knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding the physical home food environment (PHFE), and to assess if the first pregnancy provides a teachable opportunity to enhance the PHFE of first-time pregnant couples.

Design: This was a two-phase longitudinal in-depth qualitative study involving questionnaires and individual interviews during and after pregnancy.

Participants: Fifteen male partners of primigravida women.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: According to recent estimates, around 30 million people have taken Direct-to-Consumer DNA ancestry tests, typically marketed as a fun, harmless and exciting process of discovery. These tests estimate a user's ethnic ancestry, also matching users with biological relations on their database. This matching can produce a surprising 'not parent expected' discovery, where a user learns that an assumed parent (typically the father) is not a biological parent.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!