Starting breastfeeding

Research on starting breastfeeding looks at what happens in the first hours and days of feeding. A review examines interventions for promoting the initiation of breastfeeding, and other papers connect skin-to-skin contact in the first hour of life to initiation and to the duration of exclusive breastfeeding. A reference entry on breastfeeding and a study of the LATCH score for identifying and correcting breastfeeding problems are also tracked.

Many papers look at practices and beliefs around early feeding. A narrative review addresses misconceptions about colostrum, pacifiers and pumping, a mixed methods study explores breastfeeding perceptions in urban slums in Ghana, and a study in Eastern Turkey looks at the frequency and predictors of prelacteal feeding. Another paper examines factors behind delayed initiation of breast milk expression among mothers of premature infants in Malaysia.

Parents commonly ask how soon to feed, how to tell whether a baby is latching well, what colostrum is and what to expect if the baby is early or separated from them. The research continues to look at these questions in different settings and cultures.

An educator may want slides to describe early feeding in terms that reflect the variety of families and settings studied. The papers below are the ones the Hub tracks on this topic.