Effect of anxiety levels on breastfeeding self-sufficiency and feeding attitudes of mothers with babies in neonatal intensive care unit

Mothers', whose babies are hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, being worried about the health of their babies and their vital concerns may prevent their babies from being fed with breast milk. Mothers' stress levels, feelings they have experienced and have been experiencing may affect their self-confidence and perceptions of efficacy towards breastfeeding, and their predisposition to breastfeed their babies. In this sense, it has been aimed to determine the effects of mothers' anxiety levels on breastfeeding self-efficacy and their attitudes towards feeding their babies. 138 mothers who had babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Giresun Gynecology and Pediatrics Training and Research Hospital have been included in the sample of this descriptive study. Data have been collected with the Introductory Information Form, Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale for Mothers of Preterm Babies, Iowa Feeding Attitude Scale, and State/Trait Anxiety Scale. Descriptive statistical methods, T test, Anova, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis and MANOVA have been used in the analysis of the data. The significance level has been taken as p<0.050. It has been determined that the mothers included in the study have high levels of anxiety (State Anxiety Inventory scores avg. 50, Trait Anxiety Inventory scores avg. 47). Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale mean score is 70.5. It has been determined that mothers' Nutrition Attitude Scale mean score is 63 and they are undecided about breastfeeding. At the same time, a positive relationship (respectively r=0.215, p=0.011; r=0.003, p=0.974) has been found between breastfeeding self-efficacy and the State/Trait Anxiety Scale mean score. A positive relationship (respectively r=0.334, p<0.001; r=0.189, p=0.027) has been found between the State/Trait Anxiety Scale score and the mean nutritional attitude scale score. Furthermore, a positive relationship (r=0.306, p<0.001) has been determined between breastfeeding self-efficacy and nutrition attitude scale mean scores (r=0.490, p<0.001), and State and Trait Anxiety Scale mean scores.