Summary: A Qualitative Analysis

This review will critique the article by Leeming, Williamson, Johnson and Lyttle (2013) on Making use of expertise: a qualitative analysis of the experience of breastfeeding support for first‐time mothers. This critical review will examine its strengths and weaknesses in arguments, methods, analysis and validity. Research has established the difficulties that women experience during breastfeeding (Berridge et al. 2005; IFF Research & Renfrew 2012) e.g. discomfort when breastfeeding in public (Dowling et al. 2012). As a result, The World Health Organization (2003) Global strategy for infant and young child feeding recommended the involvement of health workers to provide breastfeeding support to mothers. McInnes & Chambers (2008) and Schmied
Doing this can be useful to broaden current research and inform the development of support services.

The authors have selected a crucial issue for discussion. Research has already been conducted to examine the difficulties that women face when breastfeeding and the effectiveness of help provided by healthcare workers. Therefore this is the next step in research on this topic. This article focuses on participants who already have support from “significant others” to breastfeed and simply require technical support. The authors have deliberately chosen such participants because previous research such as Entwistle et al. (2010), has centred on mothers requiring extra support e.g. low-income women, adolescents, women from social groups who are less likely to breastfeed. Therefore, the article can primarily focus on the effectiveness of breastfeeding interventions and bridge the gap by eliminating financial and socio-economic factors that may deter participants from accessing the support. The authors used other studies to discuss and illustrate different contributions and perspectives regarding the
This allows for day-to-day feedback from mothers which is effective to gain in-depth and accurate explanations. The audio diaries were recorded each day for 7 days and reviewed by the researcher so the mothers were further questioned based on their feeding experiences and issues that emerged. This is more likely to capture every minute and the interviewer can then probe further regarding specific areas that were not covered in the audio diaries and ask questions that are more relevant to the study. Data was collected in the first 5-6 weeks post-partum during hospital based and community maternity care which is a crucial time for establishing breastfeeding, so data may be more credible. However, the women are from the same region, all white British and are all educated so are likely to have similar expectations and experiences with healthcare professionals, whereas someone from a different culture/region would have different expectations. Additionally, only 4 women gave birth through caesarean, 14 women were in their 30s, 5 were in their 20s and 2 were in their teens. This is not a balanced selection even though more women give birth in their 30s nowadays. Using educated participants can however result in gaining articulate responses. This article combines previous research with its own to bring