Factors Associated with Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy of Mothers Within 6 Weeks of Delivery

introduction: promoting and maintaining breastfeeding is an important part of the healthcare, nutrition and other social measures required to promote proper growth and development of infants, and a major component of primary healthcare. several factors affect onset and duration of breastfeeding. self-efficacy is one of those factors that can be modified, but has been less studied. objective: the present study aimed to determine some risk factors associated with breastfeeding self-efficacy of mothers within 6 weeks of delivery. materials and methods: this cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study recruited 767 mothers presenting to family health and research center in rasht in 2013, using consecutive sampling (for 6 months). data was collected using demographic questionnaires and dennis breastfeeding self-efficacy scale (bsef).data was collected in two phases: on the 3rd-5th days and the 6th week after delivery. the minimum and maximum breastfeeding self-efficacy scores in bsef are 14 and 70, respectively. if a subject's score is above average, she has high breastfeeding self-efficacy and vice versa. descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (chi-square test, mann-whitney test, pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple regressions) were used to analyze the data. the confidence interval of 95% and a significance level of p<0.05 were considered. results: the results showed that the mean and standard deviation of breastfeeding self-efficacy score were 57.64±9.94 and 62.66±7.57, respectively on the 3rd-5th days and the 6th week after delivery. the group that exclusively breastfed their newborns had higher than average breastfeeding self-efficacy scores compared to other mothers. the multivariate regression model showed that the variables of educational level (secondary school p=0.002, b=2.25; and high school diploma, p=0.03, b=1.51), pain (p=0.01, b=1.6), breastfeeding discontinuation because of pain (p=0.02, b=2.67), having a successful breastfeeding experience (p=0.01, b=1.93), and exclusive breastfeeding (p=0.01, b=6.28) had statistically significant relationships with breastfeeding self-efficacy. conclusion: according to the results, breastfeeding self-efficacy influenced the status and type of breastfeeding, hence, necessary interventions should be made to remove the barriers to and resolve the problems of mothers for exclusive breastfeeding.