Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health近日在線刊登最新研究文章，David Haig教授認為，頻繁起夜哺乳或可導致哺乳女性排卵期延遲，從而降低哺乳嬰兒潛在“競爭對手”——其兄弟姐妹出生的幾率。

    文章來源：Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health

    原文鏈接：http://emph.oxfordjournals.org/content/2014/1/32.full

    原文：Troubled sleep Night waking, breastfeeding and parent–offspring conflict

    作者：David Haig

    Abstract

    Disrupted sleep is probably the most common complaint of parents with a new baby. Night waking increases in the second half of the first year of infant life and is more pronounced for breastfed infants. Sleep-related phenotypes of infants with Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes suggest that imprinted genes of paternal origin promote greater wakefulness whereas imprinted genes of maternal origin favor more consolidated sleep. All these observations are consistent with a hypothesis that waking at night to suckle is an adaptation of infants to extend their mothers' lactational amenorrhea, thus delaying the birth of a younger sib and enhancing infant survival.