No effect of birth centre care on either duration or experience of breast feeding, but more complications: findings from a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Objective: to study the effect of birth centre care on the duration of breast feeding, breast feeding complications, and women's experiences of breast feeding.

Design: randomised controlled trial.

Setting: in-hospital birth centre at South Hospital, Stockholm, and standard obstetric care in the Greater Stockholm area.

Subjects: 1230 women with expected date of birth between October 1989 and February 1992, interested in participating in a birth centre trial, and meeting medical low-risk criteria. 617 women were allocated to the experimental group offered birth centre care (EG), and 613 to the control group offered standard obstetric care (CG).

Main outcome measures: duration of breast feeding, breast feeding complications such as sore nipples, engorgement, milk stasis, and mastitis, and women's experiences of breast feeding.

Findings: no difference was found between EG and CG in the duration of breast feeding. Ninety-three per cent in both groups were breast feeding exclusively two months post partum. The average number of months of breast feeding, exclusively or partly, when investigated one year after the birth was 8.6 in EG and 8.5 in CG. No difference was observed in women's experiences of breast feeding, but rather more women in EG than in CG reported sore nipples, 36% and 30% respectively (p = 0.03), and milk stasis, 26% and 19% respectively (p = 0.002).

Conclusions: birth centre care had no effect on the duration of breast feeding, or on women's experiences of breast feeding. Prenatal attitudes were probably more significant predictors of these outcomes than differences in the two modes of maternity care in this population of highly breast feeding-motivated women. The larger proportion of sore nipples and milk stasis in the EG might have been due to earlier discharge, or to midwives less skilled in assisting with breast feeding at the birth centre than in the postpartum wards.