Background:~Maternal and child health is an important global health issue. Breast milk is the best food for infants and has many benefits for both mothers and infants. However, the breastfeeding rate in Taiwan has not increased but decreased in recent years. Breast engorgement and hypogalactia often cause distress for many women, and lead to stress and abandonment of breastfeeding, which in turn affects the achievement of motherhood. Therefore, nurses should provide support interventions for parturients early.~Methods:~This study is a two-years, prospective randomized controlled trial, and will adopt a longitudinal repeated-measures design. Convenience sampling will be used to recruit 180 pregnancy and postpartum women in the obstetrics clinic and postpartum ward of a medical center. The participants will be randomly assigned into two conditions (routine care and the breast tenderness relief intervention condition). The intervention will be provided to the participants from the 36th week of pregnancy until three months after delivery. Questionnaires, and biological measurements will be used to collect data. The outcome variables include the degree of breast engorgement, lactation, breastfeeding, maternal competencies, and stress. In addition, those data will be collected at the 36th and 38th week of pregnancy, three days, six weeks, and twelve weeks after childbirth. It is expected to analyze the research results with generalized estimation equation method.
The study purpose is to examine the effects of breast tenderness relief intervention during the late pregnancy on the parturients' breast engorgement, lactation, breastfeeding, maternal competence, and stress.