Maternity Leave Length Impact on Breastfeeding and Postpartum Depression.

CONCLUSION: The ideal maternity leave duration is unknown. With recent changes to the Department of Defense maternity leave policy, we aimed to evaluate the effect this had on breastfeeding and postpartum depression rates. No statistically significant difference was seen when we compared rates of breastfeeding in women who had 6 weeks versus 12 weeks of maternity leave. Further research is required to determine the ideal maternity leave duration and best practices to promote breastfeeding.When looking at postpartum depression, our study shows that postpartum depression was noted in 16% of patients who took 6 weeks versus 9% of those who took 12 weeks of maternity leave. No statistically significant difference was seen; however, this was likely because of the small sample size. Only 29 out of 214 women suffered from depression regardless of length of maternity leave. More research is needed to determine if maternity leave length does indeed impact postpartum depression rates. PMID: 32601695 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Military Medicine - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Mil Med Source Type: research