Children Intolerant to Cow’s Milk May Suffer from Severe Insomnia

Abstract

Brief nighttime awakenings are more frequent during the first 2 months of life than at later ages [1,2]. If one exludes the quiet awakenings that most often remain unnoticed by parents, and only consider nighttime crying, 78%–90% of infants sleep through the night at 9 months of age [1–6]. About 10% of children under 1 year of age present persistent settling difficulties and repeated awakenings during the night. The rate of sleep disruption then rises; regular wakings occur in up to 20% of children at 2 years of age [7, 8], and is still reported for 10% -15% of 3- and 4-year-old children [9, 10]. These sleep problems represent a challenge to both parents and pediatrician [2, 3,11–13]. Persistent difficulties in initiating and/or maintaining sleep have been attributed to a variety of causes. Adverse environmental conditions, such as excessive ambient noise or temperature [12, 13], psychological stress in the family [10, 15], mother’s depressed mood [6], inappropriate parental behavior [12, 13], constitutional temperament [2, 4,16-18], delayed effect of neonatal asphyxia [4, 7, 8], influence of breastfeeding [6,19], chronic physical discomfort, due to colics [13, 14], recurrent episodes of upper airway obstruction [20], otitis [12], or gastroesophageal reflux have all been reported as causes for the development of abnormal sleep homeostasis in children.

This work was supported by the Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (Grant 9.4524.87).