Why women stop breastfeeding in the early days.

Increasing breastfeeding prevalence rates has been identified as key to improving health and well being outcomes for mothers and babies. (Dyson et al 2008, Unicef 2013; Renfrew et al 2012a; Renfrew et al 2012b). Within one maternity unit in England, in 2014, 80 per cent of women initiated breastfeeding at birth, but by day 10, only 45 per cent were breastfeeding exclusively, identifying a drop off rate of 35 per cent. As part of achieving the Unicef UK Baby Friendly standards, retrospective audit was undertaken to investigate why women were not continuing to exclusively breastfeed. Findings from the study identified that when a baby received a supplement of formula milk before 72 hours of age, the mother was less likely to be exclusively breastfeeding at 10 days. This was statistically significant (Sharp 2014). An innovation was implemented for some mothers to receive additional one-to-one feeding support in hospital and the community, as a result of which supplementation rates decreased.