investigation the relationship between self-esteem and breastfeeding self-efficacy in primiparous breastfeeding mothers referring to mashhad medical centers

Background and objective: breastfeeding is an effective way to protect andpromote mothers and children's health. two important factors that affectingbreastfeeding success, are self-esteem and breastfeeding self-efficacy inwomen. the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between selfesteemand breastfeeding self-efficacy in primiparous breastfeeding mothers.materials and methods: descriptive cross-sectional multi-stage randomsampling study conducted in 2014 on 300 primiparous breastfeeding mothersreferring to healthcare centers of mashhad, iran. data collection was performedby demographic form, breastfeeding self-efficacy scale and rosenberg selfesteemscale. data were analyzed using descriptive, inferential statistics andgeneral linear model through spss version 16.results: about demographic characteristics of participants, mother age(p= 0.001) and husband age (p< 0.001) and family income (p= 0.024) had asignificant relevancy with self-esteem but infant age, husband education,residency and method of delivery weren't like that. and about relation withbreastfeeding self-efficacy only method of delivery (p= 0.040) was significant.as well as, most mothers (79.3%) had high level of breastfeeding self-efficacywith a mean score of 131±13.60 and 78.7% of them had high level of selfesteemwith a mean score of 27.85±3.54. regression analysis confirmed therelationship between self-esteem and breastfeeding self-efficacy. accordingto the result by each score increasing of self-esteem score, breastfeeding selfefficacyscore increased about 0.779.conclusion: as the result indicated, maternal self-esteem is related tobreastfeeding self-efficacy. these factors can help health care providersto predict length of breastfeeding, success rate of exclusive nutrition inmothers and can lead to the identification of mothers at the risk of the earlybreastfeeding cessation.