Applying suggested new terminology and definitions for human milk feeding in the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) longitudinal pregnancy cohort

Abstract

The complexity of human milk-feeding behaviours may not be captured using simpler definitions of “exclusive” and “non-exclusive” breastfeeding. New definitions have been suggested to describe variation in these behaviours more fully but have not been widely applied. We applied the new definitions to data derived from 3-day human milk-feeding diaries. Participants (n = 1091) recorded the number, beginning/end time, and modes of feeding of infants aged 3 months. Data were used to create six exclusive groups according to feeding mode(s): (1) human milk at-breast only; (2) human milk at-breast and human milk in a bottle; (3) human milk at-breast and infant formula in a bottle; (4) human milk at-breast and human milk and infant formula mixed in the same bottle; (5) human milk at-breast, human milk in a bottle, and infant formula in a bottle (not mixed); and (6) a bottle that sometimes contained human milk and sometimes infant formula (not mixed), never at-breast. Differences in maternal and infant characteristics were examined among groups. Fifty-seven percent fed at-breast only (Group 1). Those in Group 1 spent a similar amount of time feeding directly at-breast (median 132 (IQR 98–172) min/day) as those in Groups 2 (124 (95–158)), 3 (143 (100–190)), and 5 (114 (84–142)) (p > 0.05), indicating that adding bottle feeding did not always reduce the time infants were fed at-breast. Applying new suggested definitions to describe human milk-feeding behaviours from the mothers’ perspective highlights the complexity of patterns used and warrants further application and research to explore impacts on health outcomes.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2021-0658
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Institute of Health & Neurodevelopment (AIHN)
Additional Information: Copyright © 2022, The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Physiology (medical),Nutrition and Dietetics,Physiology,General Medicine,Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism
Publication ISSN: 1715-5320
Last Modified: 27 Mar 2024 08:23
Date Deposited: 24 Jan 2023 15:41
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://cdnscie ... /apnm-2021-0658 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2023-01
Published Online Date: 2022-09-22
Accepted Date: 2022-08-12
Authors: Jarman, Megan (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-4477-9314)
Shen, Ye
Yuan, Yan
Madsen, Mette
Robson, Paula J
Bell, Rhonda C

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