Iyannah Hatcher
Research Mentor(s): Amanda Crandall
Mentor Department: Pediatrics
Authors:
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 6
Abstract
Though eating habits and mental health are topics that have been heavily researched in the past decade, little is known about the development of feeding behaviors in infants and the psychological toll they can have on their mothers. Children of mothers in distress are more likely to struggle with their early emotional development, and this can contribute to issues involving attachment and socioemotional skills, and increase the risk of mental health problems in the infant’s future. This study focuses on the psychological impact that infants’ feeding behaviors have on the mothers by examining feeding sessions of infants at 2, 6, and 9 months of age. The study focuses on 5-minute segmented videos to analyze the attitudes of the mothers during the feeding to assess the emotional responses of mothers, watching for signs of both internalized and externalized distress. The study aims to learn how these behaviors and relationships change as the infant grows older. Ultimately, a very important goal of the research is to support and foster healthier mental health outcomes for mothers. We hypothesize that parents will show more anxiety when their infants consume less milk/formula in a single feeding. This study is ongoing. However, it appears as though the findings support our hypothesis. In typical feedings, there appears to be a negative correlation between the amount of milk the baby has consumed and the mother’s distress. Understanding the connection between mother and infant on a deeper, more complex level can open doors to providing proper support for the mothers and help teach others about the impact of an infant’s feeding behaviors on their later development and growth.
