Journal Summary
Laurel Goodman et al. (2016) described breastfeeding barriers and support in a rural setting. Everything comes from the idea that there is less success in breastfeeding initiation and duration in rural areas. The main public health goal is to ensure the well-being of mothers and children and exclusive breastfeeding is the main factor here.It is believed that breastfeeding contributes to the development of a baby, it prevents illness and reduces obesity.
However, there are low rates of breastfeeding due to barriers, discomfort and the work. Women who have no financial opportunities tend to stop breastfeeding when they have problems with it. The next problem is that medical staff is not well-educated in terms of breastfeeding. Thus means that they cannot tell mothers how to cope with their breastfeeding troubles. The authors considered primary and secondary sources devoted to breastfeeding and revealed that official authorities do not implement effective policy to increase breastfeeding duration.In order to promote a breastfeeding, a society should improve positions of people with low income, poor health and pregnant teenagers. The authors provided practical survey and collected data from mothers and medical staff to consider the problem. The results allow to see a clear picture of factors that cause difficulties in maintaining breastfeeding in a certain community. There were some important factors: lack of information about breastfeeding, time constraint and lack of support to mothers. Some participants stated that they needed realistic information about breastfeeding, healthcare providers reported that they also needed to get such information, and there was identified problem that the media misrepresented the true breastfeeding. The authors suggested that some women have opportunities to provide breastfeeding, but they do not know how to do it in the best way.
The study revealed that mothers get support during birth and breastfeeding during their hospital stay. If a woman hasn’t breastfed previously, then she has to spend nearly 30 minutes at each feeding, so sometimes women do not have enough time to breastfeed their children. The next problem is that women lack a continued support. Mothers with low income have to return to work early that leads to the early cessation of breastfeeding. The businesswomen also prefer to work instead of breastfeeding. Thus, there is a need to provide additional financial support for women to ensure their safety and to inform them that breastfeeding is extremely important for the health of a child.
Lack of information about breastfeeding services and access to them is the next issue. Mothers reported that they learned about these services from external sources while they should get the information earlier. The authors proclaimed that it is important for breastfeeding mothers to share their experience with others to achieve best results and overcome barriers to breastfeeding. A special community space in hospitals where mothers can learn new important information about breastfeeding is essential for distribution of information. Such collaboration results in improvement in breastfeeding and duration rates.
To summarize, the authors considered breastfeeding barriers and support in a rural setting. They provided a …
