Motherhood unveiled: examining the dynamic relationship between sleep quality and breastfeeding confidence in postpartum primiparous women in Syria: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Background Breastfeeding self-efficacy signifies a mother’s confidence in her ability to breastfeed. Sleep quality, on the other hand, refers to the effectiveness of sleep. Low sleep quality is a common issue faced by new mothers during the postpartum period. It remains unclear whether there is a connection between a mother’s perception of breastfeeding self-efficacy, which has a positive effect on breastfeeding, and sleep quality during the postpartum period. This study aims to determine the relationship between sleep quality and breastfeeding self-efficacy among primiparous mothers during the postpartum period, while also examining the impact of different demographic factors. Materials and methods This descriptive study included 316 primiparous women who delivered babies in Damascus, Syria. Data were gathered using a questionnaire comprising 53 questions divided into three sections: demographic information, the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (BSES-SF), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Participants’ answers were collected via telephone interviews conducted by the authors, along with an electronic version of the questionnaire that was distributed online. IBM SPSS was used to perform descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA, MANOVA, post hoc tests, and Pearson correlation analyses. A P-value of