Communication of the infant with a focus on the breastfeeding process: integrative literature review

Abstract

The baby's communication during breastfeeding is multimodal in nature, manifesting thru gazes, gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations, which signal needs, interests, and affective states, significantly influencing emotional, affective, and social development. This study aimed to analyze the scientific evidence on the baby's communication signals during the breastfeeding process and how the environment perceives them. This is an integrative literature review, conducted through searches in seven national and international databases, following the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). After the process of identification, screening, and eligibility, three studies met the inclusion criteria. The results indicate that breastfeeding constitutes a privileged context of interaction in the mother-baby dyad, in which the baby presents itself as an active subject of communication, emitting multimodal signals to which the adult responds sensitively and appropriately. The analyzed evidence converges in pointing out that these interactional exchanges play a fundamental role in the constitution of the baby's subjectivity and in strengthening the relational bond. The study emphasizes the relevance of identifying and understanding the baby’s communicative signals during breastfeeding, since attentive and sensitive listening can open important windows of opportunity for the promotion of holistic development in early childhood, while also highlighting the scarcity of scientific publications specifically addressing the baby’s communication signals in this context.