The Rocky Sleep Study

Rocking the cradle around the clock? Desperately seeking dreamland?

The Rocky Sleep Study can offer you some help if your baby is between 5 and a half and 8 months old and having difficulty sleeping at night.

What is the Rocky Sleep Study?

The Rocky Sleep Study is a trial of two forms of a sleep intervention.
It has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The Rocky Sleep Study can offer you some help if your baby is between 5 and a half and 8 months old and having difficulty sleeping at night.

Parents who have infants with behavioural sleep problems will participate in one of two groups. Group A parents will attend a group sleep teaching session, and will receive infant safety information following support phone calls and the second data collection point. Group B parents will attend a group safety teaching session, and will receive sleep intervention information following support phone calls and the second data collection point. Parents will be randomly assigned to either Group A or Group B.

Teaching sessions are two hours in length for both Group A and Group B parents. Both teaching sessions will be delivered by trained public health nurses.

Research indicates that infants with persistent sleep problems are more likely to have behavioral problems later in childhood. We developed the sleep intervention to help infants learn to soothe themselves to sleep. Parents who receive information about sleep and safety will have valuable tools to assist their infants.

A pilot study demonstrated that the same approach to sleep problems helped about 40 families improve their infants’ sleep. This project is important, because without evidence to show whether the approach to assisting parents makes a difference; help delivered in a systematic way will not be available to families across BC. We need you to participate in this research. We are training public health nurses to provide parents with the approach to infant sleep problems so that, if it’s effectiveness is supported, we can help parents who are struggling with infant sleep problems.

Quotes from participants who had the intervention

“There was one book that was a very relaxed approach to putting your child to sleep. We tried that but it wasn’t fast enough. I remember sitting down and thinking I need some guidelines. I need someone wanting me, needing me to do this. I needed some structure.”

“They need to gain the skills to fall asleep on their own, and if their parents are always helping them fall asleep, then you could have a five year old that still needs parents to fall asleep, and that’s not really what most parents aspire to have for their children.”

“What I found most helpful was the step-by-step procedure for trying to gradually get a baby to go down. The plan for going in after 30 seconds and then after a delayed time was helpful because it was something that I could follow when I’m thinking ‘I can’t do this anymore’ . . . There was something to fall back on.”

“[After the seminar,] you kind of walked away feeling normal, that you weren’t a total failure as
parents. You feel like you meet others, and you know, oh, we are the same. You will be comfortable because not only your kids have that. It is not your kids have some things really difficult, but it’s a general problem we are facing, and there are some ways to work out.”

Contact Information

Study Coordinator: Kathy Gregg, 604-822-7480, sleepresearch@nursing.ubc.ca

The Study Team:

Dr. Wendy Hall
Radhika Bhagat, CNS, VCH
Dr. Rollin Brant
Dr. Jean Paul Collet
Dr. Amiram Gafni
Dorothy Hamilton, PHN
Dr. Eileen Hutton
Kathy Hydamaka, PHN
Dr. Osman Ipsiroglu
Val Munroe, Assistant Director, VCHRI
Dr. Roy Saunders
Kathy Triolet, PHN
Lillian Tse, PHN

Who Can Participate?
Infants:
• Between 5 and a half and 8 months
• With no identified health problems
• Who wake 2 or more times per night at least 4 nights per week
• Who wake for more than 20 minutes per night at least 4 nights per week

Parents who:
• Are biological or adoptive
• Read and speak English
• Have access to a telephone
• Are in one or two-parent families with both parents committed to the study

What Is Involved?

Parents contact Kathy Gregg if they are interested in the study. We will deliver all study materials to parents’ homes.
Parents will give consent to:
• have their babies wear a special wrist watch on their ankles for 5 days to measure sleep patterns, and keep a diary of their babies’ sleep for 5 days,
• answer some questions on issues, such as their sleep and fatigue.

• be assigned to group A (a sleep teaching session) or group B (a safety teaching session).
• attend a 2 hour teaching session taught by a public health nurse at a nearby community health centre with opportunities for specific questions about their babies after the session. (We will cover some transport costs and childcare for the 2 hours).
• Receive calls twice a week from the public health nurse for two weeks to offer support.
Six weeks after the teaching session,
• babies will wear a special wrist watch on their ankles again for 5 days,
• parents will keep a diary on their babies’ sleep for 5 days,
• parents will answer some questions on issues, such as sleep and fatigue
• parents in Group B will get information about sleep approach
• parents in Group A will get information about the safety approach.
Twenty-four weeks after the teaching session,
• babies will wear the wrist watch for 5 days,
• parents will keep a diary of their babies’ sleep for 5 days,
• parents will answer the same questions again.