Introduction
Breastfeeding is a biological inheritance in women all over the world. It is a natural way to feed born babies and the best source of nutrition. Conditions like pneumonia and loose stools after birth are frequently seen in formula-fed babies causing high death rates. Urinary tract infections, otitis, meningitis, and hemophilia, have higher chances of occurrence in infants with formula-fed milk, while the risk is reduced in human milk. Effective breastfeeding can contribute to a high mortality rate in new infants. Thus, breastfeeding assessment tools are developed to promote and advise mothers’ comfort, and motivation, and this also assesses the child’s neuro behavior.
What Is Breastfeeding?
Breastfeeding is a nursing process, where a newborn is fed with the mother’s milk. Deciding to breastfeed is a personal choice. It is a woman's opinion drawn from friends and family. Experts strongly recommend breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months, and after the introduction of food, it is recommended to continue breastfeeding throughout the first year of the baby’s life. The frequency of breastfeeding depends upon how the baby prefers small, frequent, or longer feeds. Breastfeeding highly impacts the growth of a newborn. Newborns are often fed every two to three hours, which changes to three to four hours within two months.
What Are the Benefits of Breastfeeding to Mothers and Infants?
There are immense benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and infant:
For mothers:
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It helps the new mother to burn the extra calories and helps to lose the pregnancy weight faster.
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This process releases the hormone oxytocin that helps the uterus to shrink and return to its pre-pregnancy size and reduces uterine bleeding after birth.
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Prolonged breastfeeding for up to two years gives immense benefits to mothers by reducing the risk of ovarian cancer, and breast cancer and also lowering the risk of osteoporosis.
For infants:
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Breast milk is ideal nutrition food for newborns. It is a perfect meal with the appropriate amount of protein, vitamins, and fat required for a newborn to grow.
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It is more easily digested by an infant than formula milk.
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It contains antibodies that fight against bacteria and viruses and reduces the risk of allergies and asthma.
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Babies who are exclusively breastfed reduce the risk of getting a respiratory illness, bouts of diarrhea, ear infections, and lower hospitalization trips.
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Most importantly, the close contact between the child and mother during breastfeeding fosters psychological and emotional bonds, leading to healthy growth and development of the child.
What Are Lactation Care Assessment Tools?
Many malnourished and small infants within six months of age have issues with breastfeeding and restoring effective exclusive breastfeeding is the main goal. Assessment is a critical initial step of case management. Critically it is tough to check breastfeeding lactation issues and evaluate progress. There are a few components that help in this and help the overall success of lactation. This includes the attitude of the mother, position, and posture, infant’s behavior, LATCH, condition of the breast, efficient feeding, infant well-being, and mothers’ perspective on the nursing experience. It is important to figure out the initial challenge for both mother and the infant. More specific diagnosis leads to more targeted and more successful feeding for caregivers and infants. The common lactation care assessment tools are:
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LATCH scoring system: This scoring is incorporated into hospital medical records and made before discharge. LATCH is a breastfeeding charting system that gathers information about individual breastfeeding sessions. The LATCH denotes,
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L- How well the infant latches onto the breast.
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A- Amount of audible swallowing noted.
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T- Mother’s nipple type.
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C- Mother’s levels of comfort.
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H- the amount of help required by a mother who needs to hold her infant at the breast.
This system assigns a numerical score. This system visually represents the same form as an Apgar scoring grid. Each component scored from 0 to 2 a total of 10 scores. This assessment is done on the first day of life and later at the time of discharge. It is a simple, useful measure for caregivers to use in maternity wards to assess breastfeeding. This score is important in predicting exclusive nursing while discharged.
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Mother-baby assessment tool (MBA): This is also known as the Apgar score and stands for mother and infant breastfeeding behavior. Mother-baby assessment is characterized by a five-point chart that involves an assessment of the mother-to-infant breastfeeding behavior. Signaling positions, lactating, milk transfer, positioning the placement of the baby. Baby’s comfort and also the condition of the breast are taken into consideration.
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Infant breastfeeding assessment tool (IBFAT): IBFAT is used by medical professionals, mothers, and nurses. This instrument contains four components these include, readiness to feed, rooting, fixing, and sucking.
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Bristol breastfeeding assessment tool (BB&T): BBAT added two more components to the LATCH score that is position and attachment
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Lactation care assessment tools?
The advantages and disadvantages of lactation care assessment tools are:
Advantages:
LATCH is a simple and cost-effective tool for both maternal and infant variables. These components are useful in detecting even within 24 hours of childbirth. IBFAT is also a simple and cost-effective tool designed for mothers and midwives, and MBA is a simple tool used for the follow-up development of the newborn. This can be used even for hospital charting and in triage. Despite these tools still, problems are associated with breastfeeding, hence new tools are required to maintain consistency of the effectiveness.
Disadvantages:
Some researchers state that these assessment tools are too broad to show the difference in pre and post-frenotomy breastfeeding. And studies found that there is not much difference between LATCH and IBFAT scores across timelines but improvement is seen in BBAT scores. BBAT is considered a more sensitive breastfeeding assessment tool.
Conclusion:
Breastfeeding is a great source of nutrition for infants. A healthy mother and baby relationship in the initial stages of life is much more important and required for efficient lactation that involves the convenience of the mother, proper infant sucking, and swallowing. Significance in early breastfeeding, monitoring activities of premature babies under kangaroo mother care, and breastfeeding charts are actors followed up after discharge. Many assessment tools have been evolved to promote breastfeeding. Most of them focus on the mother's attitude and attitude, the infant's placement connection, the baby's health, and the mother's impression of lactational experiences. These tools are not clear and well-defined points for gold standard techniques; each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. To guarantee improved breastfeeding efficiency and higher maternal self-confidence, more reliable evaluation techniques are necessary.
