Breast feeding and the weekend effect: An observational study

Abstract

Objective: To compare the incidence of breast feeding by day of week of birth. Design: Retrospective database study using 16 508 records from the 2005 and 2010 Infant Feeding Surveys. Setting: England and Wales, UK. Participants: Mothers of a sample of births from among all registered births in the periods August-September 2005 and August-October 2010. Main outcome measure: Incidence of breast feeding after birth. Results: Among babies of mothers who left full-time education aged 16 or under, the incidence of breast feeding was 6.7 percentage points lower (95% CI 1.4 to 12.1 percentage points) for those born on Saturdays than for those born on Mondays-Thursdays. No such differences by day of week of birth were observed among babies of mothers who left school aged 17 or over. Conclusions: Breastfeeding policy should take into account differences in breast feeding by day of week of birth, which are apparent among low-educated mothers. Further research is needed to ascertain the reason for this finding.