Faisal Hussain1, Ajay Kumar Arya2
AIM
To assess the maternal knowledge, attitude and practices towards breast-feeding and to assess the effectiveness of antenatal maternal breast-feeding education for increasing breast-feeding initiation and duration.
STUDY DESIGN
A prospective clinical observational study performed for six-month period at a tertiary care hospital of Uttarakhand.
METHODS
150 healthy pregnant women attending ANC Clinic and their newborns admitted in Department of Paediatrics and Obstetrics & Gynaecology were included in our study. These women and their newborns are followed up at birth, after one month, three and six months.
RESULTS
The study shows that 65.71% of mothers had initiated first breast-feed within 1 hour of normal vaginal delivery while none had initiated after caesarean section. Within first 4 hours, 34.28% initiated breast-feed after normal vaginal delivery and 20.0% after caesarean section. EBF for six months was continued in 48.33% babies in the counselled group while only in 28.0% in the non-counselled group and the association was found to be highly significant (p value<0.01). The practice of bottle feeding (1.33%), top feeding (6.67%), episodes of diarrhoea (6.67%) and ARI (6.67%) are much lower in the counselled group as compared to non-counselled group (14.67%, 18.67%, 18.67% and 9.33% respectively).
CONCLUSION
More effective community approaches are needed in Kumaon region’s antenatal clinics to prepare expectant mothers to make informed decisions regarding breast-feeding and lactation management and to ensure early initiation and continuation of exclusive breast-feeding.
