BACKGROUND:
Infant-adult bedsharing is common in many communities around the world and facilitates infant-parent bonding and breastfeeding. Little is known about sleep patterns during bedsharing compared to cot sleeping.

OBJECTIVES:
The objective of our study was to understand more about overnight waking and sleeping in infants up to 6 months of age.

METHODS:
Families who regularly bedshared were recruited through advertisements and matched with cot sleeping babies recruited from the local maternity hospital. After gaining parental consent 80 infants (aged 2 weeks - 6 months) were videoed sleeping overnight in their own homes in their usual place: bedsharing (40 infants) or cot sleeping (40 infants). Video data was analysed to identify overnight behaviours including sleeping and waking time.

RESULTS:
Bedsharing infants woke more frequently (mean times/night: Bedshare 4.6, cot 2.5) but for less time per awakening. Fifty four percent of the cot infants were still awake 40 minutes after waking compared to 15% of bedshare infants. Total sleep time was not significantly different for the two groups. Video data also revealed that bedshare babies were seldom moved from the adult bed on waking, unlike cot sleeping babies, who were often moved for feeding and other care activities.

CONCLUSIONS:
While total sleep time is similar in bedshare and cot sleeping babies the disruption to bedshare babies is considerably less and may contribute to a better quality sleep. Ethics approval: Southern Regional Health Authority Ethics Committee protocol number 96/03/023. The study was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand

KEY MESSAGE:
Midwives have a key role in sharing information about infant sleep with families. While bedsharing infants wake more frequently overnight– they do so for less time at each waking and total sleep time is similar to cot-sleeping infants. Context-specific research is important to learn about bedsharing sleep, which has different patterns from cot sleep. Poster session 1 (Group A)