In the general population, sleeping problems can precede an episode of
depression. We hypothesized that sleeping problems during pregnancy,
including insomnia symptoms, shortened sleep, and daytime tiredness, are
related to maternal postnatal depressiveness. We conducted a
prospective study evaluating sleep and depressive symptoms, both
prenatally (around gestational week 32) and postnatally (around 3 months
after delivery) in the longitudinal CHILD-SLEEP birth cohort in
Finland. Prenatally, 1667 women returned the questionnaire, of which
1398 women participated also at the postnatal follow-up. Sleep was
measured with the Basic Nordic Sleep Questionnaire (BNSQ) and depressive
symptoms with a 10-item version of the Center for Epidemiological
Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Altogether, 10.3% of the women had
postnatal depressiveness (CES-D ≥ 10 points). After adjusting for main
background characteristics and prenatal depressiveness (CES-D ≥ 10),
poor general sleep quality (AOR 1.87, 95% CI 1.21–2.88), tiredness
during the day (AOR 2.19, 95% CI 1.41–3.38), short sleep ≤ 6 and ≤ 7 h,
sleep latency > 20 min, and sleep loss ≥ 2 h were associated with
postnatal depressiveness (all p < .050).
Postnatally, after the adjustment for background characteristics,
virtually all sleeping problems (i.e., difficulty falling asleep (AOR
7.93, 95% CI 4.76–13.20)), except frequent night awakenings per week or
severe sleepiness during the day, were related to concurrent postnatal
depressiveness. Thus, several prenatal and postnatal sleeping problems
are associated with increased depressive symptoms 3 months postnatally.
Screening of maternal prenatal sleeping problems, even without
depressive symptoms during pregnancy or lifetime, would help to identify
women at an increased risk for postnatal depressiveness.