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Chapter 3

Baby-Lag: Methods for Assessing Parental

Tiredness and Fatigue

Alanna E.F. Rudzik and Helen L. Ball


Introduction


Altered sleep patterns, inadequate sleep, and fatigue are extremely common among


new parents and form a major part of life in the postpartum period. Thefirst months of


anewinfant’s life are a time of extensive adjustment for families, and the experience of


newparenthoodisoftencoloredbysleep deprivation and chronic tiredness—what has


popularly been termed‘Baby-Lag’(Anonymous2012 ). Studies of stress, depression,


anxiety, and measures of parenting function and behaviors would all benefit from the


inclusion of information about parental tiredness and fatigue. However, the measure-


ment of states of tiredness and fatigue is complex and inconsistent. Some success has


been achieved in objectively quantifying sleep loss and tiredness, but (as discussed


below) only in restricted settings unrelatedtoparentingintheearlypostpartum.


In this chapter, we review existing‘etic’, or externally generated methods that


measure fatigue and tiredness and assess their relevance and feasibility for use with new


parents in the earliestphase of their children’s lives. Objective measures including


polysomnography, actigraphy and psychomotor vigilance tests have been widely used


in the clinical arena. Subjective measures in which the respondents rate their sleep


within a given period, report on some aspects of sleep, or give details of their sleep


ecologyhavebeenusedinclinicalpopulations and extended into community studies.


A.E.F. Rudzik (&)
Department of Anthropology, State University of New York College at Oneonta, Oneonta,
NY, USA; Parent-Infant Sleep Laboratory, Durham University, Durham, UK
e-mail: [email protected]


H.L. Ball
Department of Anthropology, Parent-Infant Sleep Laboratory,
Durham University, Durham, UK
e-mail: [email protected]


©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
L.L. Sievert and D.E. Brown (eds.),Biological Measures of Human
Experience across the Lifespan: Making Visible the Invisible,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44103-0_3


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