the role of reproductive variables, anxiety, physical activity, on the sleep quality of lactating women referring to health care centers of zanjan-iran

Background: mothers in the postpartum period experiences a change in sleep pattern and loss of sleep duration. in the meantime, factors can cause irregular sleep patterns and decreased sleep quality.objectives: the aim of this study was investigating the factors of fertility, anxiety and physical activity on the sleep quality of the lactating women visiting healthcare centers in zanjan, iran.methods: this descriptive crosssectional study was carried out from 2018 to 2019 on 380 women aged 1445 years referred ayatollah mousavi hospital in zanjan and its affiliated clinics who were maximally 6 months postpartum and selected by convenience sampling method. the measuring tools used in this study included petersburg sleep quality questionnaire, beck anxiety inventory, and a checklist containing demographicfertility. data were analyzed through spss software using descriptive and analytical tests (ttest, mannwhitney, and chisquare). the statistical significance level was considered as p<0.05.results: in this study 45.8% (n= 174) of the participants suffered from mild anxiety and 13.2% (n= 50) of them from moderate anxiety. the mean score of their sleep quality was 4.70 ± 3.06. the effect of physical activity (pvalue= 0.006) and anxiety level (pvalue= 0.002) on womenchr('39')s sleep quality was statistically significant.conclusion: the results of the present study confirm the positive effect of regular physical activity and the negative effects of anxiety on sleep quality of the breastfeeding mothers.