Spontaneous behaviors during breast crawling and factors influencing self-locating mothers' breasts in newborns: A cross-sectional study

Shengnan Cong; Xuemei Fan; Ping Yu; Chunxiu Zhou; Lingzhi Wang; Rui Wang; Xiaowei Song; Jingyi Feng; Xiaoqing Sun; Lijuan Sha; Zhu Zhu; Aixia Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16440

Spontaneous behaviors during breast crawling and factors influencing self-locating mothers' breasts in newborns: A cross-sectional study

Heliyon. 2023 May 24;9(6):e16440. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16440. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Shengnan Cong¹, Xuemei Fan¹, Ping Yu¹, Chunxiu Zhou¹, Lingzhi Wang¹, Rui Wang², Xiaowei Song³, Jingyi Feng⁴, Xiaoqing Sun², Lijuan Sha², Zhu Zhu¹, Aixia Zhang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nursing, Women's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (Nanjing Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital), Nanjing, China.
² School of Nursing, Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu, China.
³ Department of Neurosurgery, Sir Run Run Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu, China.
⁴ Faculty of Science, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract

Breast crawling in newborns to propel themselves to their mothers' breasts normally occurs upon skin-to-skin contact with mothers immediately after birth but is often missed by the neglect of hospital staff and insufficient evidence support. Hence, this study described the behavioral characteristics of 135 newborns from China during breast crawling and further explored the factors influencing newborns' self-locating mothers' breasts (measured by whether fail to experience the familiarization stage, initial time and duration of the familiarization stage) using multivariable analysis. The findings supported and extended previous studies that newborns could emerge in nine instinctive stages and corresponding spontaneous behaviors early in life. Moreover, abnormal fetal heart rate during labor appeared to interfere with newborns experiencing the familiarization stage (aOR = 9.27, 95% CI: 1.41 to 61.07, P = 0.021), while using synthetic oxytocin (β = 5.94, 95% CI: 0.35 to 11.54, P = 0.037), using antibiotics (β = 11.09, 95% CI: 4.11 to 18.07, P = 0.002), and newborns' gender (β = -5.69, 95% CI: 11.26 to -0.12, P = 0.045) would alter the initial time of the familiarization stage. Finally, this study proposes evidence-based strategies to prevent abnormal fetal heart rates and improve medication use.

Keywords: Abnormal fetal heart rate; Breast crawling; Clinical practice; Development; Drug; Newborn; Spontaneous behavior.