Julie Quinlivan, Sonia Kua, Robert Gibson, Andrew McPhee, Maria M Makrides
Abstract
Health authorities recommend 6 months of fully breastfeeding and continuation of breastfeeding for at least a year. Many women initiate breastfeeding in hospital but discontinue before the six-month period, and therefore do not optimise the public health benefits. The aim of this study was to determine whether these women could be identified at hospital discharge, to enable targeted interventions.
A secondary analysis of women who intended to breastfeed and were enrolled in a large randomised trial was undertaken. Women were enrolled in the antenatal period and antenatal, delivery and six month postnatal questionnaires were completed. Univariate and multivariate analyses were undertaken to determine the variables associated with early cessation of breastfeeding within six months, compared to women who continued to breastfeed.
Of 2148 women who initiated breastfeeding in hospital, 877 continued to breastfed either partially (N = 262) or fully (N = 615) until six months postpartum and 1271 ceased breastfeeding early. Median breastfeeding duration in women who ceased early was 3(+6) weeks (IQR 1(+1) to 11(+2) weeks). In multivariate analysis, factors that were significantly associated with early cessation of breastfeeding were maternal factors of lower education (less than 12 years of schooling, no completion of further education), smoking (pre-pregnancy or during pregnancy), and newborn factors of preterm birth and low birthweight (all p < 0.01). These variables correctly identify 83% of women.
We can identify women who initiate and then prematurely discontinue breastfeeding prior to hospital discharge. Evaluation of additional interventions to support longer duration of breastfeeding in women at risk of ceasing prematurely is needed.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 June 2015.
All research outputs
#6,849,525
of 26,227,947 outputs
Outputs from International Breastfeeding Journal
#263
of 627 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#73,283
of 279,739 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Breastfeeding Journal
#8
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,227,947 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 627 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its peers.
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