Providing breastfeeding support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Concerns of mothers who contacted the Australian Breastfeeding Association

  1. Naomi Hull
  2. Renee L Kam
  3. Karleen D Gribble

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Abstract

Concerns of mothers seeking breastfeeding support during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the experiences of Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) volunteers who assisted them, were explored via an online survey. Surveys were completed 16 th March to 18 th of May 2020 and described the COVID-19 related concerns of 340 individuals. One hundred and thirty six mothers (64%) sought support to protect their infants by continuing breastfeeding, increasing milk supply, or restarting breastfeeding. Mothers were commonly stressed, isolated and needing reassurance. Thirty four (10%) raised concerns about COVID-19 and breastfeeding safety. One hundred and twenty nine (61%) informed volunteers they were unable to access face-to-face health services because of fear or unavailability. Most common breastfeeding concerns were related to insufficient milk or weight gain, painful breasts, relactation, and reducing supplemental milk. Volunteers reported mothers were worried stress had reduced milk supply, that milk supply concerns were exacerbated by the inability to weigh infants, and that seeking medical treatment was being delayed. ABA volunteers stated they felt supported and confident assisting mothers while also expressing distress at mothers’ situation. ABA’s role in emergency response should be recognised and national planning for infant and young child feeding in emergencies, must be urgently developed, funded, and implemented.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.18.20152256: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Since the data was pre-existing, contains no identifying information, and is of negligible risk, the research was determined to be exempt from the need for ethical review by the Western Sydney University Human Research Ethics Committee.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Study Limitations: It is a limitation of this study that not all ABA volunteers who were contacted by individuals with concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic may have completed the study survey. In addition, not all individuals whose breastfeeding concerns were related to the pandemic may have mentioned this to ABA volunteers or fully explained their concerns.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.18.20152256v1 on medRxiv