Association between breastfeeding and new mothers’ sleep: a unique Australian time use study

Table 2 Maternal weekly hours spent in unpaid childcare and other domestic work, personal care and free time activities, combined feeding groups^(a)

a. Activity/Breastfeeding status	No breastfeeding^(b) (obs = 27)	Any breastfeeding^(b) (obs = 300)		p-value
Necessary time
Sleep, adult meals and other personal care time	65.48	63.43		.409
Maternal sleep	58.13	57.41		.085
Committed time
Childcare	39.39	47.89		.007
Sleeplessness	1.63	3.48		.029
Other unpaid work	21.51	17.72		.039
Free time	22.26	19.47		.286
Night-time (sleep plus disturbed sleep)	61.20	59.32		.379
b. Activity/Age of target infant (months)	3 months (obs = 86)	6 months (obs = 134)	9 months (obs = 107)	p-value
Necessary time
Sleep, adult meals and other personal care time	64.18	65.59	63.58	.186
Sleep	55.79	57.32	55.65	.202
Committed time
Childcare	47.1	42.97	40.66	< 0.001
Sleeplessness	2.98	2.33	2.18	.135
Other unpaid work	17.77	20.31	20.70	.003
Free time	21.60	19.86	21.09	.342
Night-time (sleep plus disturbed sleep)	60.25	61.28	59.24	.154

^(a) Back- transformed means from residual maximum likelihood analysis, using linear mixed model. Note the back-transformed means will be similar, but not be the same as the predicted means for the original data due to the square root transformation and the unbalanced nature of the data. See supplementary table for predicted means and average standard error of difference. ^(b) No breastfeeding is exclusive formula feeding (feeding category B) & formula milk and solids (E)). Any breastfeeding is exclusive breastfeeding (feeding category A), mixed breast milk and formula milk – no solids (C), breastmilk and solids (D), mixed breastmilk and formula milk with solids (F))

ISSN: 1746-4358