Prospective Monitoring of Breastfeeding Behaviors in Primiparous Mothers with Risky and Non-risky Age Groups.

AIM: This study aimed at monitoring breastfeeding behaviors in primiparous mothers with risky and non-risky age groups prospectively.

METHOD: This is a kind of comparative and prospective study that was carried out in 306 mothers who were registered at seven family health centers. The study sample comprised 68 primiparous mothers who were in the risky age group and 238 primiparous mothers who were not in the risky age group. It was interviewed with the mothers twice when their babies were one and six months old. Personal Information Form, Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (BSES-SF), and LATCH Breastfeeding Assessment Tool were used for data collection.

RESULTS: The mothers in the risky age group had a lower breastfeeding rate when their babies were one month old and a higher formula feeding rate when their babies were six months old than the rates observed in case of the mothers in the non-risky age group. Mothers in the non-risky age group breastfed 14.8 times more in the first month and 5.4 times more in the sixth month than those in the risky age group. The mean scores of LATCH and BSES-SF in the first month and the mean scores of BSES-SF in the sixth month of mothers in the non-risky age group were higher than those of the mothers in the risky age group.

CONCLUSION: It was determined that primiparous mothers in the non-risky age group exhibited more positive behaviors in terms of breastfeeding. Close monitoring of breastfeeding behaviors of mothers in the risky age group could be recommended.