Abstract

Introduction The early initiation of breast feeding is a high-impact intervention that gives newborns a better chance of survival. We assess the barriers and facilitators influencing the practice of early breast feeding of newborns in public primary healthcare facilities (PHCs) in Northeast Nigeria, to influence the planning of programmes targeted at improving newborn care in the region.

Method We used an explanatory mixed-method approach. We conducted case observation of childbirths and newborn care for the quantitative arm, and interviewed mothers and birth attendants 1?hour after childbirth for the qualitative arm. The analysis for the quantitative arm was done with SPSS V.23. For the qualitative arm, we transcribed the audio files, coded the texts and categorised them using thematic analysis.

Result We observed 393 and 27 mothers for the quantitative and qualitative arms of the study, respectively. The quantitative arm shows that 39% of mothers did not breastfeed their newborns within 1?hour of birth. The qualitative arm shows that 37% of mothers did not breastfeed within 1?hour of birth. Themes that describe the barriers to early breast feeding in public PHCs are: birth attendants’ unwillingness or inability to accommodate mothers’ safe traditional practices, ineffective rooming-in practices, staff shortages, lack of privacy in the lying-in ward and poor implementation of visiting-hour policy in public PHCs. The pregnant women denied safe traditional birth practices like chanting, praying or reading religious books during delivery are five times more likely not to breastfeed newborns within the first hour of birth (relative risk=4.5, 95% CI 1.2–17.1) compared with pregnant women allowed these practices.

Conclusion Stakeholders must increase their focus on improving breastfeeding practices in public PHCs. Instituting policies that protect mothers’ privacy and finding innovative ways to accommodate and promote safe traditional practices in the intrapartum and postpartum period in PHCs will improve the early breast feeding of newborns in these PHCs.

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This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the license is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

1. Olukolade George Shobo1, 
2. Nasir Umar2, 
3. Ahmed Gana3, 
4. Peter Longtoe1, 
5. Omokhudu Idogho4, 
6. Jennifer Anyanti5

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