The latest guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) is said to be that babies should be breastfed for the first 6 months of their life. However, researchers found out that breastfeeding could also aid new mothers as well in reducing chronic pain after undergoing cesarean delivery.
According to Medical Xpress, chronic pain after being subjected in cesarean delivery usually lasts up to three months. However, researchers from Spain discovered that chronic pain may be reduced if mothers would breastfeed their babies longer. The team then assessed 185 mothers who gave birth via cesarean delivery between January 2015 and December 2016.
The mothers were interviewed about their chronic pain and breastfeeding practices. After four months, 87 percent of the mothers are said to practice breastfeeding. Yet, the 58 percent just breastfed their babies for less than two months. Chronic pain was discovered to be more eminent in those mothers who just breastfed for a shorter duration.
"These preliminary results suggest that breastfeeding for more than 2 months protects against chronic post-cesarean pain, with a threefold increase in the risk of chronic pain if breastfeeding is only maintained for 2 months or less,” study author and doctor from the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Senora de Valme in Spain, Carmen Alicia Vargas Berenjeno explained in a statement.
“It's possible that anxiety during breastfeeding could influence the likelihood of pain at the surgical site 4 months after the operation," study authors wrote in their research paper presented last annual event Euroanaesthesia Congress 2017 in Geneva. Berenjeno then concluded that their study opened another reason to encourage women to breastfeed their young ones as Medical News Today reported.
Nonetheless, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a 2016 report saying that the method of breastfeeding in reducing chronic pain is already done by 51.8 percent of the new mothers. Yet, the rates are still rising and are expected to still be recommended to other women that underwent cesarean delivery.
