Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding and its determinants in first 6 months of life: A prospective study



antenatal visits, maternal employment, received advice on
exclusive breastfeeding during postnatal visits, inter delivery
interval [birth spacing], previous duration of exclusive
breastfeeding in multiparous) at second level, and at third
level, infants' characteristics (birth weight, initiation of
breastfeeding, any breastfeeding difficulties). The
frequencies of variables were calculated and bivariate
analysis was performed between individual exposure factors
and the outcome, between exposure factors and other
variables and between the outcome and other variables. For
all data analysis, cutoff for statistical significance was set at
p<0.05. For multivariate analysis all variables whose
associations with outcome had the p value <0.20 were
selected in order to study possible confounding factors.
Experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has
Table 1: Characteristics of mother and children


been performed with approval of ethical committee of the
Government Medical College, Rajkot (reference number was
not provided). Research carried out on humans is in
compliance with the Helsinki Declaration.

Results:

Nine out of ten participants were literate; 86% were aged
more than 20 years and 84% belonged to low socioeconomic
class. A little more than 2/5th of study population (43%) was
primiparous and 86% had normal delivery. Majority of moth-
ers had attended more than 3 antenatal visits. One fifth of
the mothers delivered low birth weight (< 2500 grams) ba-
bies. As shown in table 1, deliveries among 86% of the study
population were conducted in hospital. Fourteen percent
mothers returned to usual work within 6 months of delivery.



No.

%

Infants

Sex

Male

253

54.8

Female

209

45.2

Birth weight (gms)

> 2500

367

79.4

< 2500

95

20.6

Place of Birth

Hospital

399

86.4

Home

63

13.6

Maternal

Maternal age (years)

> 30

34

7.4

21-30

364

78.7

< 20

64

13.9

Education

Illiterate

44

9.5

Primary

122

26.5

Secondary & Higher Secondary

245

53.0

Graduation & More

51

11.0

Working status

Housewife

399

86.4

Working

63

13.6

Socio-economic status

Upper

15

3.2

Middle

61

13.2

Lower

386

83.6

Parity

Primiparous

195

42.2

Multiparous

267

57.8

Type of delivery

Normal

399

86.4

Caesarian

63

13.6


The breastfeeding initiation rate in this study was 100%. Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding at 3 months was 97% which was re-
duced to 62% at the end of 6 months of infant's age. The use of water, tea, juice etc was found in remaining study sample but solids
were not introduced in any infant.


OJHAS Vol 8 Issue 1(3) Chudasama RK, Amin CD, Parikh YN. Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding and its determinants in first 6 months of life


http://ojhas.org




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