Transactional Associations Between Bottle to Bed and Infant Sleep Problems Over the First Year

The purpose of this study was to examine associations between putting the infant to bed with a bottle and maternal-reported infant sleep problems using a 3-wave cross-lagged model. Participants included 299 mother-infant dyads. When infants were 2, 6, and 14 months old, mothers reported their feeding practices using the Infant Feeding Practices Questionnaire II and infant sleep problems using the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire. Over and above covariates (maternal education, race, WIC participation, depressive symptoms, maternal sleep quality, breastfeeding status, and weekly work hours), concurrent associations, and stability pathways, putting the infant to bed with a bottle at 2 months predicted higher infant sleep onset latency, time awake at night, and frequency of night wakings at 6 months. Infant nighttime sleep duration and frequency of night wakings at 6 months predicted greater maternal use of bottle to bed at 14 months. The indirect pathway from bottle to bed at 2 months to bottle to bed at 14 months via frequency of infant night wakings at 6 months was statistically significant supporting the transactional model whereby both mothers and infants influence the other’s subsequent behavior. The importance of preventing mothers from providing a bottle to bed and strategies to do so are discussed.