Mothers' perceptions of support for artificial feeding.

Abstract

For first-time mothers, breast and artificial feeding are completely new experiences that need to be learnt and practised. This highlights the important role health professionals have in providing support to first-time mothers in terms of information and help given. The main aim of this study was to explore first-time mothers' perceptions of support of artificial feeding from midwives and other health professionals. A quantitative descriptive survey study by means of a self-administered semi-structured questionnaire was conducted. Thirty participants completed and returned the questionnaires resulting in a 94% response rate. Findings showed that midwives provided support in terms of help given as they were the ones who helped mothers with their first bottle-feed. Conversely, midwives failed to provide support in terms of information given during the antenatal period. In the postnatal period, mothers revealed that midwives had provided them with bottle-feeding information. This lack of information lead most mothers to seek information from other sources, namely from family and friends. Even though many mothers felt that the information that they had received or obtained antenatally was useful in the postnatal period, the majority identified areas where they wished more information regarding bottle-feeding. On the basis of this study, the research concluded that while midwives did provide help to bottle-feeding mothers with the chosen infant-feeding method, this may still be considered to be lacking when it comes to providing information about bottle-feeding. However, in view of the small scale study, generalisation of such conclusions is limited and therefore it is recommended that this study is repeated with a larger sample so that better conclusions can be drawn.