Photo Credit: Javi Indy

In a challenge to the notion that teething disrupts infant sleep, researchers found no major differences in sleep time and night waking around a tooth eruption.

Results from a recent longitudinal auto-videosomnography study published in the Journal of Pediatrics challenge the widely held notion that teething disrupts infant sleep.

“Although over one-half of the parents reported sleep disturbances during teething, these subjective reports were not corroborated by the objective data,” Emily Oster, PhD, and colleagues wrote.

The study involved 849 infants aged 3 to 18 months from the US and Canada whose parents used baby monitors and had previously consented to make their child’s sleep data available for research. Parents who were able to recall the exact date of their baby’s tooth eruption within the past 4 weeks were invited to complete a questionnaire and share their child’s automated sleep data for 3 weeks before, and 1 week after, the tooth eruption.

“The [baby monitoring] system uses computer vision algorithms to detect motion-stillness patterns and translate them into sleep–wake metrics,” the researchers wrote. “This method is similar to actigraphy but monitors full-body movement rather than just wrist or ankle movement. The algorithm also tracks caregiver visits to the crib area.”

Minimal Impact of Teething on Sleep Patterns

According to the study results, analyses revealed no significant differences in total sleep time, night-time awakenings, or parental crib visits in the nights surrounding an infant’s tooth eruption compared with non-teething nights.

“Notably, these analyses identified trends indicating a progressive increase in night-time sleep duration, and a decrease in the number of night-time wakings and parental visits, across the 4 weeks analyzed,” Dr. Oster and colleagues wrote. “These developmental trends are in line with the anticipated maturation of infant sleep-wake patterns.”

Just over half of the retrospective parent reports, however, communicated changes in their child’s sleep due to teething. Among parents, 55.3% said their child slept less, 87.4% reported more night awakenings, and 39.2% said bedtime was more challenging during teething.

To manage teething symptoms, 13.5% of parents used local anesthetics, 56.5% used acetaminophen or ibuprofen, 67.6% used a frozen teething ring or washcloth, 13.4% used homeopathic remedies, and 37.4% used breast- or bottle-feeding, the researchers reported.

“Educating parents with evidence-based information may prevent potentially harmful management strategies for teething (eg, excessive use of analgesics and local anesthetics) and improve sleep problem management,” Dr. Oster and colleagues wrote.