The efficacy of massage as a nightly bedtime routine on infant sleep condition and mother sleep quality: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Backgroundand 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. Methods140 number of 15–20 days old infants were randomly put into two different groups, one with bedtime messages and the other with normal infant routine care. For the intervention group, in addition to usual bedtime procedures such as changing diapers and breastfeeding, a 15-min massage was done before sleep for a period of two weeks. For the control group, only the usual above-mentioned bedtime procedures were followed. One week before the intervention, at the end of the first week, and two weeks after the intervention, the information was recorded for both groups. 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. ResultsInfants in two control and experimental groups showed meaningful differences in variables such as, sleep latency (P = 000, 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 related to the infants' sleep, no meaningful differences were observed. In this study, there was no indication of a 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). As for other sub-factors of maternal sleep quality, no meaningful differences were seen. ConclusionThe findings of this study 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.