Proyecto BEBE: The Effect of Babywearing Education on Breastfeeding Exclusivity

Nurturely

Status

Completed

Conditions

Mother-Infant Interaction

Postpartum Depression

Breastfeeding, Exclusive

Treatments

Behavioral: Babywearing

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04376021

Details and patient eligibility

About

To test the hypothesis that increased mother-infant physical contact affects the likelihood of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their child for the first six months of life, the investigators will randomly assign half of the participating mothers to receive a baby carrier to use with their baby (to facilitate increased physical contact) while the other half of babies and mothers will receive standard care.

Full description

One hundred mothers participating in the California Border Healthy Start (CBHS) program will be randomly assigned to the physical contact group or the control group. Mothers in the physical contact group will be provided with an infant carrier to use from birth to facilitate increased mother-infant physical contact. In the control group, mothers will be provided with an infant carrier, but will not receive the carrier until postpartum week 24, once study measures have been collected. This type of multiple-baseline design will allow the investigators to objectively assess the effect of physical contact during the first six months, but will also ensure that mothers in both groups have the opportunity to benefit from the potentially positive intervention of a high quality infant carrier to promote increased mother-infant physical contact. The two groups will be compared on: 1) likelihood of exclusive breastfeeding, 2) extent of breastfeeding exclusivity (proportion of feeds that are breastmilk versus formula or other), 3) likelihood of initiating feeding in response to hunger cues versus crying (i.e., maternal responsiveness during feeding), 4) maternal score on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), 5) prevalence of breastfeeding difficulties, 6) score on the Mother-Infant Bonding Scale, and 7) beliefs about breastfeeding and infant care.

Enrollment

101 patients

Sex

Female

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

To be eligible to participate in this study, participants:

Must be a current participant in the CBHS program
Must be 18 years of age or older
Must be currently pregnant
Must be fluent in either Spanish or English
Must have consistent access to a smartphone with internet access (to fill out surveys and feeding logs)
Must have a functioning email address Must be willing to share certain personal information with the researchers

Exclusion criteria