This study aims to determine the effect of home visits on mothers' perceived social support and continuation of exclusive breastfeeding with mother breast milk.
The present study is a randomized clinical trial carried out on two groups of nulliparous women: treatment and control. A questionnaire is used to measure perceived social support for mothers and continual exclusive breastfeeding with mother breast milk.
Balanced Block Randomization sampling method is employed to randomly separate the women who entered the study into two groups. The number of samples in eight health centers is distributed equally. In order to randomly allocate the subjects, central telephone randomization is used. One hundred and eight prim parous breastfeeding mothers with 3 to 5- days breast-fed infants who have not received any food except mother milk and met the criteria for entering into the study will be selected. Inclusion criteria include such factors as mothers with an Iranian nationality, lack of physical and mental chronic debilitating diseases in mothers, which is the sole reason for the cessation of inclusive breastfeeding, mothers who are not working at health centers, mothers with 3 to 5- day-old infants who use breastfed their baby so far, and the child's lack of illness, which is a reason for the cessation of breastfeeding exclusively.
Exclusion criteria include children and mothers who, due to illness during the study, are not able to breastfeed, and mothers who use lactation pump to feed their infants. In the treatment group, in order to visit homes at the end of first to sixth months, including six home visits, it is coordinated with mothers by phone, in advance, and emphasized that fathers and any relatives involving in the breastfeeding should also attend the training. To facilitate this, it is tried that training will be conducted when father is at home such as in the evenings or on holidays. The intervening people will be identified in the first visit by asking mothers' some questions.
In home visit, the benefits of breastfeeding, the disadvantages of artificial milk, making skin contact between mother and baby, how to help mothers in breastfeeding by father and mothers' relatives, and the correct breastfeeding positions were taught orally. In addition,
a pamphlet containing breastfeeding training, prevalent problems related to this period, and misconceptions about breastfeeding will be given to the mothers. On average, each training will last 30 minutes. In each home visit, they will be asked about the continuation of exclusive breastfeeding by that time so that the treatment is intervened in the case that exclusive breastfeeding is stopped.