Publication:

Impact of breastfeeding positions on neck pain in postpartum mothers

Background Breastfeeding mothers often encounters various complaints such as pain and discomfort. It was also seen that a mother has to attain feeding position for a long period of time. Thus, our aim was to find if there is any correlation between musculoskeletal neck pain and breastfeeding position in post-partum mothers.

Methods It was a cross sectional, observational study in which sampling was done by purposive method. 207 postpartum mothers fulfilling inclusion criteria were included and a self-made questionnaire and neck disability index (NDI) were used as outcome measure. Statistical analysis was done using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 24.

Results Almost all those mothers reported neck pain while breastfeeding in different positions especially in side-lying and cross-cradle in terms of NDI with median value of 11.1 and there were 65.7% mothers who had awareness about ideal breastfeeding position. The interpretation of neck pain showed changes with respect to different positions, when analyzed by Kruskal Wallis test.

Conclusions Though it showed statistical insignificance in correlation due to various reasons such as negligence, habitualisation, lack of awareness, unmet support from family.