Abstract

GORRITA PEREZ, Remigio Rafael; BARCENAS BELLOT, Yasnier; GORRITA PEREZ, Yelina  and  BRITO HERRERA, Belkis. Maternal stress and anxiety and their association with successful breastfeeding. Rev Cubana Pediatr [online]. 2014, vol.86, n.2, pp. 0-0. ISSN 0034-7531.

Introduction: breastfeeding is the only natural way of feeding the baby and unique for his/her growth and development. There are a lot of factors that have been associated to the application of successful breastfeeding or not. Objective: to identify the degree of vulnerability to stress and state of anxiety in mothers, and their relationship with successful maternal breastfeeding. Methods: a prospective and descriptive study was conducted to study 101 mothers and their children from 13 medical offices of "Luis Augusto Turcios Lima" polyclinics located in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque province. The study was performed from February 1st, 2012 through January 30th 2013. Results: in this group, 76.2 % of mothers were 20 to 35 years of age, 89.8 % had stable couple, 50.5 % showed high-school education and 41.4 % had asthma. Vulnerability to stress and anxiety as a condition were found to be present in 46.5 % and 56.4 % of patients, respectively. Almost half of the group (49.5 %) exclusively breastfed their babies for 4 or 5 months whereas 27.7 % did it up to 6 months after birth. Those mothers with lower levels of vulnerability to stress and anxiety state showed better breastfeeding rates on the 4th, 5th and 6th months. Conclusions: it was confirmed that levels of stress and anxiety and successful breastfeeding are closely related.

Keywords : exclusive breastfeeding; vulnerability to stress; state of anxiety.

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