Discussion

The present study showed that more than half of the primipara mothers in the intervention (31, 55.4%) and control (26, 53.1%) groups were aged between 24 and 29 years. None of the participants were illiterate in either the intervention or the control group. The majority of participants in the intervention group (49, 87.5%) and the control group (45, 91.8%) were homemakers. Half of the primipara mothers in the intervention group (28, 50.0%) and more than half of those in the control group (28, 57.1%) had a duration of marital life between one and three years.

Even though only a small percentage of participants had previously acquired information about breastfeeding practices in the intervention group (14, 25%) and the control group (11, 22.4%), the sources of information were family members (10, 19.6%) in the intervention group and eight (16.3%) in the control group, and healthcare professionals (10, 19.6%), respectively. None of the participants had received information from the media, although they were all literate (100%). This may be due to their ineffective use of the media. This highlights the importance of health professionals encouraging mothers to breastfeed and motivating them to use the mass media to obtain helpful information. A study conducted by Akadri and Odelola [8] also reported that women who received information on breastfeeding from the mass media were more likely than those who received information from other sources to breastfeed exclusively for six months.

In the present study, the majority of primipara mothers in the intervention group (78.6%) started breastfeeding within one hour. None of the mothers gave prelacteal feeds, and none discarded the colostrum. They all consumed enough food and water before breastfeeding, fed their infants every two hours, and stayed composed and at ease throughout the process. The study's results align with those of Chethana et al. [9], which found that 85% of mothers had good attachment, 84.1% burped their babies after feeding, 95.3% fed colostrum to their newborns, 25.2% had given prelacteal feeds, and 60.7% of mothers had started breastfeeding within one hour. On the other hand, the percentage of mothers who started breastfeeding within one hour was significantly greater than that reported by Bethou et al. [10], where 53.3% of mothers in the intervention group initiated breastfeeding within one hour of delivery.

According to the current study, none of the mothers in the intervention group had poor breastfeeding practices: 3.6% had fair breastfeeding practices, and 96.4% had good breastfeeding practices. This proportion was higher than that reported in a related study by Yadav et al. [4], in which the intervention group's mothers had good breastfeeding practices (63.4%), fair breastfeeding practices (33.3%), and poor breastfeeding practices (3.3%). Similar results were found in another study by Thomas et al. [11], which found that none of the mothers in the intervention group had poor breastfeeding practices at the post-test, 85% had good breastfeeding practices, and 14% had average breastfeeding practices.

In the present study, it was observed that the majority of newborns in the intervention group (91.1%) demonstrated vigorous and effective feeding, while 8.9% demonstrated moderately effective feeding, and none demonstrated poor feeding behavior. In the control group, 62.5% of newborns demonstrated vigorous and effective feeding, 25.0% demonstrated moderately effective feeding, and none demonstrated poor feeding behavior. In contrast, a study conducted by Devi et al. [12] showed that 47.5% of babies had an inadequate feeding pattern. Another study by Reena et al. [13] revealed that the experimental group's newborn feeding behavior significantly increased (p < 0.001) among the study group's primigravidae.

Only 5.4% of primipara mothers in the current study's intervention group reported breast engorgement, compared with 12.5% in the control group. The effectiveness of lactation counseling was demonstrated by a similar study conducted by Padmashree et al. [14], in which mothers in the experimental group reported 13.3% breast engorgement compared with 63.3% in the control group.