Thread by @journalautism

New research from @DrAimeeGrant @sara_wyn_jones @KatWilliams123 @AutisticUK @DrSchniff @Prof_AmyBrown, who reviewed Autistic people's experiences of infant feeding (breast- and formula- feeding) including healthcare support

🧵by @DrAimeeGrant

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… (1/11)

#Breastfeeding is encouraged because of known health benefits, but it is not easy and many parents experience challenges.

Due to differences in how Autistic people experience pain and bodily sensations, we thought that they may find breastfeeding harder. (2/11)

It's worth mentioning here that the research team was led by an Autistic woman, with two Autistic women who had experience of infant feeding themselves also part of the team. It was funded by the Research Wales Innovation Fund, part of @SwanseaUni (3/11)

The evidence on Autistic breastfeeding experiences had not previously been pulled together so we searched for all scientific literature from high-income countries & things like blog posts written by Autistic people about feeding babies. This is known as a #SystematicReview (4/11)

We found eight scientific studies, and also included 14 accounts from Autistic people or health professionals providing breastfeeding support to Autistic people.

These included 300+ mothers (no trans/non-binary) experiences. Mothers mostly came from 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇦🇺 (5/11)

We took all of the information and combined it to look for overarching experiences and issues.

This is known as a "thematic synthesis", which is a type of #Qualitative research (6/11)

We found that although many Autistic mothers wanted to breastfeed there were key barriers:
1. Infant feeding support was inaccessible to Autistic women
2. The intensity of new parenthood disrupts Autistic mothers' routines, which are needed to prevent meltdowns & shutdowns (7/11)

3. When breastfeeding Autistic mothers experienced sensory challenges like ‘being touched out’ & pain, which could feel unbearable.

Despite these challenges, Autistic mothers did a lot of research and were very motivated to breastfeed. (8/11)

Formula feeding was often viewed as second best compared to breast milk, but some mothers found preparing bottles to be a comforting ritual (9/11)

This research shows that breastfeeding support from health professionals and voluntary groups are not well suited to meet the needs of Autistic parents, including support to overcome extra barriers associated with being Autistic.

This should be urgently remedied (10/11)

Thank you to @DrAimeeGrant for writing this thread. Here's a link to the paper, which is freely available via #OpenAccess, once again:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… (11/11)