The Effect of Education through Cyberspace on Continuation of Breastfeeding in Primiparous Women in Shahroud City in 2018: a Clinical Trial

Mother milk provides many health benefits to both the mother and baby. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of education through cyberspace on continued breastfeeding in primiparous women.

This experimental study was performed on 65 primiparous women aged 28-32 weeks who were referred to Shahroud childbirth preparation centers in 2018. There are four centers in Shahroud city which provide "Preparation for childbirth" education for primiparous mothers. We randomly (random numbers methods) selected two centers of the four health centers for the subjects in the experimental group recruitment. For the control group, we selected mothers who gave birth to their child in Bahar hospital and received routine care. Also, after selection of centers, we selected convenience sampling method for recruitment of both experimental and control groups after obtaining the informed consent. The experimental group received a training program based on continuous breastfeeding in 7 sessions, 45-60 minutes. We use a demographic and continuous breastfeeding questionnaire for collecting the variables. The data were analyzed by SPSS21 using independent t-test, paired t-test, and covariance test. Statistical significance level was set at 0.05.

The mean and standard deviation of continuation of breastfeeding were 28.72 ± 3.96 before intervention and 31.54 ± 4.5 after intervention in the experimental group and 31.21 ± 3.41 before intervention and 29.43 ± 2.91 after intervention in the control group. Therefore, the duration of continued breastfeeding was longer in the experimental group (Pvalue = 0.02) compared to the control group post intervention.

According to the results, education through cyberspace is recommended as an easy, safe, inexpensive and effective intervention for controlling and resolving lactating mothers' problems.