Interestingly, among the group of mothers who had not
planned to breastfeed, the risk of depressionwas higheramong
women who went on to breastfeed. These differences are
statistically significant for depression measured at 21 months,
the largest being for any breastfeeding for 2 weeks onEPDSat
21 months (OR 1.62; 95 % CI 1.12, 2.36); at 8 weeks and
33 months the coefficients are all positive, though not generally
significant at the 5 %level). To test whether our results
were driven by a few mothers with very severe depressive
symptoms, we repeated the analysis excluding those mothers
with EPDS scores of 20 or more (the cut-off used in general
practitioners’ guidelines [35] ); the results were virtually the
same. We also investigated whether the effects depended on
whether the mother was primiparous or multiparous, as suggested
by [36]; again, the results were not affected.