Antenatal breast milk expression at term increases postnatal lactational performance

Abstract

Background: Breast milk contains balanced nutrients for the complete growth of body and brain of neonates and infants. Breast feeding is rich in anti-infective factors and improves immune system, thus reducing the child mortality rate. Objective of present work was to study the effect of antenatal breast milk expression at term in improving lactational performance as compared to control group.Methods: The prospective, comparative study was conducted for 2 years to observe effects of antenatal expression of breast milk on postnatal lactational performance in a tertiary care centre in Central India. 200 Subjects after 37 weeks of pregnancy divided in two groups of 100 each 1) study group 2) control group by systematic random sampling technique. Prior examination was done to exclude any inverted or cracked nipples and appropriate treatment instituted. The women with diseased breast and conditions, high risk pregnancy, congenitally anomalous fetus and drugs affecting lactation were excluded from study. Study group women were counselled to express milk 2-3 times every day preferably during bathing. All women were followed up in hospital and postnatal lactation performance was observed in both groups.Results: The study group did not find it difficult to initiate breast feeding after vaginal or caesarean delivery and in 78% of patients time interval from initiation of lactation to establishment of lactation was less than half hour as compared to control group (38%) P value <0.001. Statistical analysis showed significant difference in the results of those groups.Conclusions: Daily antenatal breast milk expression after 37 weeks of pregnancy significantly reduced the time for establishing full breast feeding and reduced breast feeding failures.

Evaluating antenatal breastmilk expression outcomes: a scoping review

“…Eleven (55.0%) were published within the last 5 years (2015-2019) [21,24,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. Included studies originated from six countries: Australia (n = 7) [13,21,24,[33][34][35][36], New Zealand (n = 1) [42], the United Kingdom (n = 5) [20,39,[43][44][45], Sweden (n = 1) [46], United States (n = 3) [37,38,47], and India (n = 3) [16,40,41]. Three dominant research groups were identified; Forster et al [13,21], Demirci et al [37,38], and Casey et al [35,36], have each published two studies included in our review.…”

“…Whereas ten (50.0%) studies examined aBME practices in the general obstetrical population [16,24,34,37,40,41,[44][45][46][47], and ten studies (50.0%) reported on maternal or newborn outcomes as they related to high-risk populations including women with diabetes (n = 8) [13,20,21,33,35,36,42,43], hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (n = 1) [38], and overweight or obesity (n = 1) [39].…”

“…Seventeen studies (85.0%) provided data on breastfeeding outcomes which ranged from those immediately after delivery to those at 6 months postpartum [13,16,20,21,33,34,[36][37][38][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Breastfeeding outcomes were primarily related to newborn feeding sources (breastmilk and/or infant formula supplementation) at various times postpartum.…”

“…Three studies (15%) did not meet the screening question criteria, indicating that they may not be empirical studies that could robustly be evaluated by the MMAT [33,43,46]. Five studies (25%) met 1/2 of the screening criteria questions [13,38,44,45,47], and 12 studies (60%) fulfilled both screening question criteria [16,20,21,24,[34][35][36][37][39][40][41][42]. Significant methodological weaknesses were evident in the majority of the studies reviewed.…”

“…On average, the included studies successfully fulfilled 2.15/5 of the MMAT methodology appraisal criteria. Thirty-five percent (n = 7) fulfilled > 2/5 methodological appraisal questions [20,21,34,35,[37][38][39]; four were qualitative studies [41,42,44,45], one was a quantitative descriptive study [38], one was a quantitative RCT [21], and one was a quantitative nonrandomized study [20]. Additionally, six of these seven studies (85.7%) were published in the last 5 years (2015-2019) [21,34,35,[37][38][39].…”