A cross-sectional survey was used to determine the association among women’s breastfeeding
problems, their perceptions of support from midwives and child health nurses, and
breastfeeding cessation in the first 10 weeks postbirth in a sample of Western Australian
women (N = 2669). Primiparous women (75.8%) experienced significantly more problems
that multiparous women (52.6%). Although 78.8% of all women agreed or strongly agreed
that staff were helpful with feeding, 53.4% confirmed that different midwives offered different
feeding advice; however, receiving different advice from midwives around feeding
was not associated with breastfeeding cessation. Differences in breastfeeding cessation were
associated with parity. Primiparous women’s cessation was associated with experiencing
any breastfeeding problems, unhelpful hospital midwives, and unhelpful information from
child health nurses, whereas for multiparous women, this included 2 or more breastfeeding
problems, not being able to choose when to feed, and unhelpful information from child
health nurses