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Abstract

This paper reports the investigation of the stress level and brainwave characteristics of breastfeeding women. The stress level measured individually using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) questionnaire by Sheldon Cohen, and while the brainwave signals were recorded from 25 of breastfeeding women either through direct feeding or milk expressing using wireless Electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment via Bluetooth. Then, the recorded EEG signal was analyzed using existing Simulink Matlab. The outcomes showed the stress level, Brainwave Balancing Index (BBI), brain hemisphere dominance and the correlation of PSS and BBI of breastfeeding women. The result presented 72 % of high in stress of breastfeeding women with 76 % of them were in balanced brainwave after breastfeeding session. Both methods either direct feeding or milk expressing showed balanced brainwave recorded by the women between 61.1 % to 77.8 %. Besides that, 44 % of breastfeeding women were in right dominance and 36 % of them had changed the dominance throughout the three sessions. Finally, there were no significant correlations between PSS and BBI of breastfeeding women for all three breastfeeding sessions.