Assessing the feasibility of a wearable consumer device for capturing newborns' sleep patterns in naturalistic environments.

Newborn sleep plays a vital role in early neurological and physiological development and may have lasting consequences for infants' developmental trajectories. However, few methods capture high-density sleep data in naturalistic settings during the newborn period. We address this by assessing the utility of the Owlet Dream Sock for capturing sleep patterns, timing, and duration in the home. Thirty-nine newborns (51.30% female, M age = 9.38 days old, SD = 6.40) wore the Owlet Dream Sock for fourteen days during all sleep periods. Newborns exhibited two common types of sleep bouts, light-only bouts (awake → light sleep → awake sequences) and full sleep cycles (awake → light sleep → deep sleep → light sleep → awake sequences). On average, sleep bouts began around 11:48 AM, and newborns spent approximately 172 monitoring minutes awake, 536 in light sleep, and 54 in deep sleep per day. The duration of time spent awake and in light sleep did not change over the assessment period; however, both the duration of deep sleep and the number of full sleep cycles increased each week. While nighttime sleep minutes did not change, daytime sleep minutes decreased. The Owlet Dream Sock shows acceptable feasibility for capturing high-density newborn sleep data to capture developmental changes in sleep patterns over the first weeks of life.