A systematic review of the effectiveness of interventions to increase women's confidence in breastfeeding

Abstract

Background Breastfeeding is the gold standard in infant nutrition. Despite increasing mothers choose to breastfeed, low exclusivity remains. One of the top-ranked and yet modifiable reasons is perceived insufficient milk that results in low confidence in breastfeeding. To date, no review examined the effectiveness of intervention in increasing women’s confidence in breastfeeding.

Purpose The purpose of this review was to examine intervention studies that aimed at enhancing women’s confidence or self-efficacy in breastfeeding.

Design and methods A systematic review was performed. Ten articles were identified through electronic database searches with a prior inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results Inconsistent findings were found in the review and could not conclude which particular intervention could improve maternal breastfeeding self-efficacy or confidence due to the wide variety of approaches tested. However, in studies that reported increase in breastfeeding self-efficacy after intervention, breastfeeding outcomes in terms of duration and exclusivity improved.

Conclusion Future research with better design and longer follow-up is recommended to evaluate the long-term effect of these interventions. An environment conducive to building up women’s confidence in breastfeeding is needed.