Fig. 3

Maternal IBI transition at the initiation of breastfeeding and at the perceiving of milk ejection. Data from which each event timing could be extracted among the 26 participants were analyzed, when the infant’s face touched the mother’s breast (A), when the infant latched on to the nipple (B), and when the mother reported perceiving a milk ejection (C). Peri-event nIBIs are shown in mean (red lines) ± SEM (gray). Vertically shaded colors indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) compared to the nIBI at heartbeat = 0 (yellow, decreased after the microevent; blue, increased after the microevent; grey, higher or lower values before the microevent) by Steel’s test