Abstract â–¡ 147

Objectives. To study an association between mode of sleep (solitary vs. bed sharing) and infant's behavioural features as measured by Early Infancy Temperament Questionnaire (EITQ).

Subjects and methods. The study covered the period from 1997 to 1998 and comprised 204 randomly selected clinically healthy infants aged 2-4 months who were singletons born in St. Petersburg within the period in consideration. The mothers were asked to complete the questionnaires addressing infant, maternal, and demographic major characteristics as well as some infant care practices with particular emphasis on sleep routine and parent-infant bed sharing. As a part of interview, the mothers were requested to complete the EITQ consisting of 76 items which describe different aspects of infant behaviour. Groups of questions were added according to scoring sheet to produce total scores to describe nine different aspects of infant temperament: activity, rhythmicity, approach, adaptability, intensity, mood, persistence, distractibility and threshold.

Results. Of 204 infants, 175 (85.8%) were solitary sleepers, 17 (8.3%) usually slept with one parent, and the rest 12 babies (5.9%) usually slept with both parents. Group of solitary sleeping infants did not significantly differ from bed sharing group in any of infant, parental and demographic major characteristics. Kruskall-Wallis test revealed statistically significant association between bed sharing and infant's mood (H corrected for ties = 8.30; P = 0.016) and persistence (H corrected for ties = 6.60; P = 0.037) in which solitary sleeping infants were characterised by more positive mood (i.e., had more amount of pleasant behaviour during day) compared with the infants who shared the bed with parent(s), and most negative mood was the feature of those infants who shared the bed with both parents. Solitary sleeping babies appeared to be more persistent (i.e., were able to maintain a specific activity for a longer period of time) than the infants who shared the bed with the parent(s). These associations remained after adjustment has been made for major potential confounders.

Conclusion. Parent-infant bed sharing does not have any positive impact on infant behaviour.