Transactional Associations Between Maternal Feeding Practices and Infant Sleep Problems Over the First Year

The purpose of this study was to examine associations between two maternal feeding practices, putting the infant to bed with a bottle and using food to soothe, 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 the Food to Soothe Scale 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 problems at 6 months which in turn predicted greater use of putting the infant to bed with a bottle at bedtime at 14 months. The entire indirect pathway was statistically significant supporting the transactional model whereby both mothers and infants influence the others’ subsequent behavior. This effect was significant over and above food to soothe. Although greater use of food to soothe at 2 months predicted higher infant sleep problems at 6 months, there was no evidence of a transactional effect, and this pathway became non-significant when bottle to bed was included in the model. The importance of preventing mothers from providing a bottle to bed and strategies to do so are discussed.