Effect of Prenatal Counseling on Breastfeeding Rates in Mothers of Twins

Breastfeeding Twins: Factors Related to Weaning

“…The variables that significantly influenced the weaning of twin infants before 180 days of age were maternal age ≤ 26 years (p = .006), breastfeeding duration shorter than 12 months during a previous pregnancy (p < .001), gestational age at delivery ≤ 36 weeks (p < .001), infants' birth weight < 2,300 g (p < .001), lack of support during the lactation period (p < .001), breastfeeding difficulties (p < .001), nonexclusive breastfeeding (p < .001), and infants' hospital discharge at 11 or more days of age (p < .001). As observed in our previous study (Mikami et al, 2017), breastfeeding counseling did not influence the weaning of twin infants before 6 months of age (p = .576). All variables that had statistically influenced weaning in twin infants in the marginal analysis (see Table 2) were considered in the complete Cox proportional hazards regression model: maternal age, duration of previous breastfeeding, infants' gestational age at delivery, infants' birth weight, support during the lactation period, difficulty breastfeeding, breastfeeding mode, and days before infants' hospital discharge.…”

Counselling interventions to enable women to initiate and continue breastfeeding: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Most studies included only healthy term newborns with no congenital anomalies or admission to neonatal unit. One study recruited only low birthweight infants [56], another recruited only preterm infants [58], one study was of twin births only [59] and another included only those who were jaundiced [60].…”

“…More than two thirds of interventions were provided to women one-to-one ( n = 51) whereas some interventions included one-to-one and group contacts ( n = 7). Sessions were less often provided only to groups of women ( n = 3) [59, 72, 73] and one study involved two supporters for each mother [57]. The majority of interventions were provided face-to-face ( n = 37) but many also incorporated counselling by telephone ( n = 28) and three interventions were delivered by telephone only [55, 74, 75].…”

“…Most comparisons were described in the studies as usual or standard care and in ten studies this included either care in a UNICEF/WHO accredited hospital [50, 63, 66, 76, 77], working towards accreditation [78] or a session using UNICEF/WHO guidelines [57, 59, 61, 75]. In 11 studies extra contacts were provided either to support women with different aspects such as breast examination or infant safety, or to provide counselling that was not breastfeeding related such as general nutrition counselling.…”

“…Most of the interventions appeared to include some elements of anticipatory approaches, however these were not clearly described and therefore it was not possible to undertake analyses for this sub-category of interventions. There were insufficient data to conduct analyses for the following sub-groups: adolescent women (one study, [53], birth by caesarean section (no studies), multiple pregnancies (one study [59]), mothers planning to return to work (two studies [80, 81]), or mothers with high BMI [74].…”