Takeaway
Pregnant women with epilepsy (WWE) have worse sleep quality during pregnancy and postpartum compared with non-pregnant WWE, but not when compared with healthy pregnant women. Seizure burden was the same between pregnant and non-pregnant WWE.
Why this matters
Sleep deprivation increases the risk of seizures and pregnancy complications in WWE, and previous findings suggest that poor postpartum sleep quality is attributed to lower neurodevelopment and general adaptive scores in children. However, but the association between epilepsy, pregnancy and sleep is not well understood.
These data suggest that pregnancy, rather than epilepsy, is the main driver for poor sleep health in WWE, and poor sleep quality does not appear to impact seizure burden.