High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2025

The Weight of Waking: The Relationship Between Postpartum Mental Health and Infant Sleep
Files
Course Code
STA
Course Number
4164
Faculty/Instructor
Nathaniel Simone
Faculty/Instructor Email
nathaniel.simone@ucf.edu
Abstract, Summary, or Creative Statement
This study explored which factors act alongside maternal mental health to predict how often their infants awoke at night. More specifically, this project aimed to determine if education level interacted with postpartum mental health symptoms to predict awakenings. A multiple linear regression model was developed using a dataset on 410 new mothers from Switzerland. The data contained information on the mothers’ recent symptoms of several mental health conditions as well as their infants’ sleep quality. Despite finding a statistically significant model, it did not account for much of the pattern in infant sleep awakenings. Future research should include mothers from countries with more pronounced socioeconomic inequality to gain a more diverse perspective on the effects of socioeconomic status on maternal mental health and infant sleep. Through this project, I learned more about how complex human behavior is and the limitations of using linear models.
Keywords
postpartum; mothers; infant; sleep; depression; anxiety; PTSD; education
Recommended Citation
Courtright, Casey S., "The Weight of Waking: The Relationship Between Postpartum Mental Health and Infant Sleep" (2025). High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2025. 16.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2025spring/16
