Effectiveness of structured education and follow-up in the management of perceived breastmilk insufficiency: a randomized control trial.

In this study, we examine the effectiveness of structured education and follow-up in the management of perceived milk insufficiency and in increasing the baby's amount of milk intake in breastfeeding mothers. We conducted a randomized controlled trial over the period December 2018-June 2019 at Family Health Centers in Turkey with 64 mothers (intervention group: 33 and control group: 31). We provided the intervention group with education using structured educational material. A Descriptive Information Form, a Breastfeeding Follow-up Form, and the Scoring System for Measuring a Baby's Intake of Breast Milk were the instruments we used in the data collection. Mothers in the intervention group started breastfeeding their babies in the first one hour after birth. We observed at each monitoring that a significantly greater percentage of the mothers in the intervention group believed their milk to be sufficient and that they fed their babies exclusively with breast milk in the three follow-ups. We found from the data we obtained that all three tracking times indicated that the baby's amount of milk intake in the intervention group was better than in the control group; the differences were statistically significant. We concluded that structured education and follow-ups increased the exclusive breastfeeding of 0-2-month-old babies, improved perceptions of sufficient milk intake, diminishing the perception of breast milk deficiency.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07399332.2021.2007249.