Maternity Care Survey 2025: national report
Findings on women's experiences of antenatal care, labour and birth, care in hospital or a midwife-led unit, care in a neonatal unit, care at home / in the community and feeding their baby.
Feeding your baby
Figure 11: The percentage of women feeding their baby breast or expressed breast milk only has remained the same since 2018 (52%) while the percentage feeding their babies a combination of breast and formula milk has increased from 21% in 2018 to 25% in 2025.
How the baby was fed in the first few days after the birth, 2018 and 2025, weighted percentages.
Person-centred care
When asked the question were your decisions about how you wanted to feed your baby respected by staff?”, 85% of women answered “yes, all the time”, an increase from 81% in 2018.
Most women (92%) received advice on feeding their baby, but 2% of women did not receive any and 5% did not want or need any. Of the women who received advice, 54% considered the advice consistent all of the time. This is similar to 53% in 2018.
Support for breastfeeding
Just under two in five women (19%) did not want to or could not feed their baby breastmilk. The majority of the remaining women (91%) felt supported at least some of the time to breastfeed their baby or feed their baby expressed milk. However, 9% of the remaining women did not feel supported.