Existential and embodied presence-the meaning of peer support caring as experienced by breastfeeding peer support mothers in Sweden.

PURPOSE: Many mothers face breastfeeding challenges that professional healthcare lacks the capacity to address, which can evoke exposedness and vulnerability. In Sweden, the non-profit Breastfeeding Support Organisation provide breastfeeding peer support. The aim is to deepen the understanding of the meaning of peer support caring, as experienced by breastfeeding peer support mothers.

METHOD: This study adopts a Reflective Lifeworld Research approach. Twelve lifeworld interviews with peer support mothers in the Swedish Breastfeeding Support Organisation was conducted.

RESULTS

The essential meaning is described as an existential and embodied presence. This is further illuminated through the constituents; embodied knowing awakens caring, embracing the breastfeeding story, transcending time and space, being an anchored companion, and finding an authentic way of being.

CONCLUSIONS

Breastfeeding can evoke existential anxiety-feelings of homelessness and uncanniness-that awaken a desire for what Heidegger calls Care: a fundamental mode of being marked by engaged, reciprocal concern for existence. In this study, peer support caring is explored as a voluntary caregiving practice. When this practice embodies elements of Care, it becomes existential caring-a transferable form of care that fosters existential health and wellbeing, meaning and authenticity. Existential caring may enrich professional care, where structural limitations affect breastfeeding support.