Exclusive breastfeeding mitigates the association between prenatal maternal pan-demic-related stress and children sleep problems at 24 months of age (Q6690294)

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper Exclusive breastfeeding mitigates the association between prenatal maternal pan-demic-related stress and children sleep problems at 24 months of age accepted for publication on Development and Psychopathology. This study is part of the longitudinal and multi-centric Measuring the outcomes of maternal COVID-19-related prenatal exposure (MOM-COPE) study. Here, we report on the interactive influence of variations in antenatal exposures to maternal pandemic-related stress (PRS) and exclusive breastfeeding on infant sleep disturbances at 24 months of age. Procedures Mother-infant dyads were recruited from May 2020 to February 2021 in ten neonatal units in Northern Italy and followed until 24 months of age. Between 12 and 48 h after childbirth (T0), women retrospectively reported on their PRS experience during pregnancy, as well as on their current anxiety levels and breastfeeding practices. Maternal anxiety and breastfeeding were also assessed at 3 (T1) and 6 (T2) months after childbirth. Infants sleep disturbances were reported 24 months after childbirth (T3). An initial sample of 320 mother-infant dyads were recruited at birth. From this sample, 220 dyads (around 69%) completed the T1 assessment, whereas 85 mothers (around 26,5%) provided data at the 24-months follow-up assessment (T3). Given the presence of missing-data for some of the study measures in the T3 sample, we decided to use a listwise deletion approach resulting in a final analytic sample of 78 participants. Analytical plan A series of linear models were fitted and compared using a full Bayesian approach for estimating parameters. Model comparison allows for the selection of the most plausible models given the data and a set of candidate models. Specifically, we compared the following models: model 0 (M00), i.e., a model assuming that there were no associations among the study variables; model 1 (M01), including only exclusive breastfeeding as predictor; model 2 (M02), including only maternal PRS; model 3 (M03), including both exclusive breastfeeding and maternal PRS main effects and, lastly, model 4 (M04), testing the interactive effect between maternal PRS and exclusive breastfeeding. Finally, we addressed our exploratory research question by including maternal anxiety factor score (i.e., estimated values for maternal anxiety assessed at 0, 3 and 6 months of infant age) in our statistical model. Findings in brief Bayesian analyses revealed that maternal PRS was positively associated with sleep problems in children who were not exclusively breastfed from birth to 6 months, while the association became non-significant among infants that were exclusively continuously breastfed until 6 months of age. Interestingly, exploratory analyses indicate that maternal postnatal anxiety might not represent a substantial modifier of these effects.