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.