Knowledge of breast feeding among primigravida mothers

Knowledge of breast feeding among primigravida mothers Mohite RV, Mohite VR, Kakade SV Abstract Background : Breast feeding, the most natural way of infant feeding to satisfy nutritional, metabolic and psychological needs of the baby. Objectives : To assess the knowledge of breast feeding among primigravida mothers attending ante-natal clinic and to determine the association between socio-demographic variables with their knowledge. Materials and Methods : Hospital based cross sectional study was conducted at Ante-natal clinic of Krishna Hospital and Medical Research Center, Karad district Satara. Pre-tested structured proforma used to collect information from 590 married primi gravid mothers attending anti-natal clinic during study period by utilizing personal interview method. Statistical Analysis : socio-demographic frequency percentage distribution, knowledge scoreing and statistical association was analysed by using chi-square test. Results: Out of 590 primi gravida mothers,59.66% showed fair quality of knowledge about breast feeding. knowledge about rooming in, family support for breast feeding & burping after breast feeding was 97.7%, 95.4% , 93.5% however weaning, colostrums feed, hazards of bottle feeding and prelactal food was 84%, 82.7%,75.5% and 54% respectively. Statistical association was existed between age, education, religion, socio-economic status & occupation of respondents with their knowledge about breast feeding (?2=151.52, p < 0.0001*; ?2=211.27,p<0.0001*; ?2=133.91,p < 0.0001*; ?2=35.59,p < 0.0001* and ?2=131.04,p<0.0001*) respectively. Conclusion: knowledge of breast feeding among primi gravida mothers attending ANC clinic was of fair in quality.


Introduction:
Breast feeding is the most natural way of infant feeding to satisfy nutritional, metabolic and psychological needs of the baby.A child who is breast fed has greater chances of survival than a child artificially fed.Breast feeding significantly reduces the risk of death especially from diarrhea and pneumonia in infants compared to formula fed babies 1 .It also protects the infant from early malnutrition and some infections 2 .Breast feeding has shown to ensure quality survival, the risk of adult onset of disease like diabetes, allergic disorders like asthma, CAD, hypertension, celiac diseases, lymphoma and cataract is substantially reduced in later life.Breast feeding has advantage to both the baby and the mother.
Owing to the advantages of the breast milk to the infants, WHO in 1993 took efforts to improve infant and young child nutrition by promoting breast feed-ing.WHO and UNICEF created and promoted Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) in 1991, is to ensure that all maternity services whether free standing or in a hospital, becomes centers of breastfeeding support 3 .According to breast feeding promotion network of India only 10% of hospitals and maternity facilities in India had BFHI status in 2005

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. This reflects the fact that more effort is needed to make all existing hospitals "Baby Friendly".If appropriate measures are undertaken to strengthen training in breast feeding counseling and the number of trained professional counselor at all level is increased, exclusive breast feeding might become a social norm.The government of India launched various national health programmes through vertical and horizontal health administration to reduce the infant, child mortality and morbidity and malnutrition.
The present study was conducted in a rural area of Satara district to assess the awareness regarding breast feeding practices among the primi gravida attending ante-natal clinics in Krishna hospital, karad.

Materials and methods :
Hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted at Ante-natal clinic of Krishna Hospital & Medical Research Center(KH&MRC), Krishna Institute Of Medical Sciences University, Karad, district Satara.KH & MRC is well known tertiary health care center with 850 bedded hospital with all medical disciplines providing specialty and super-specialty services to rural people located in western Maharashtra of Satara district with income source mainly coming from sugar industry, dairy, poultry etc. with 74.5% female literacy rate and stood 1 st rank in provision of heath care services in whole Maharashtra.Randomly three months were selected by lottery method during year 2010 and all primi gravid mothers attending anti-natal clinic in these three months were included as study population.With prior permission from Medical Director, KH & MRC and after verbal consent from each study respondents after inclusion and exclusion criteria, data was collected from 590 study subjects who were participated in study.Personal interview method was used to collect data from study respondents by utilizing pretested structured proforma that includes sociodemographic characteristics as well as knowledge variables related to breast feeding.Study variables were selected from previously published research papers as well as designed by experts from pediatrics and community medicine.Pilot study was conducted and any ambugations obtained were corrected.Duplication of cases was avoided.Socio-economic status was assessed according to modified B-J Prasad 5 classification based on Consumer Price Index of year March 2010.
The respondent with right or correct answer was marked as knowledge score '1'and with don't know or wrong scored as '0' for variables under study.The maximum and minimum knowledge score was obtained and respondents were categorized into poor , fair and good knowledge quality .Knowledge variable and socio-demographic frequency percentage distribution of study subjects were done and Chi-square test applied to find out statistical association between knowledge and socio-demographic characteristics by using statistical software, InStat.

Results:
The table I  Table IV shows that knowledge about rooming in, family support for breast feeding & burping after breastfeeding was 97.7%, 95.4%, and 93.5% respectively.Knowledge about weaning was 84%.82.7% respondent knew that breast-feeding is complete food to baby till 6 months of age but awareness about colostrums feed was 72.2%.Knowledge about hazardness of bottle-feeding was 75.5%.Knowledge about expressed breast milk; exclusive breast-feeding & prelactal food was 68.9%, 57.2%, and 54% respectively.40.3% respondents aware that breast-feeding should be started immediately after normal delivery but awareness about breast-feeding after caesarian section, weaning time, maternal illness & breast-feeding, demand feeding was  The key to successful breast-feeding is likely to be information, education, and communication (IEC) strategies.The quality of knowledge and support has a crucial role in success of breast-feeding promotion 6 .In our study it was seen that 95.4% mothers knew that full family support need for breast-feeding with overall average satisfactory knowledge about breastfeeding was 59.6%.Study carried out by Kishore SS 7 , among rural Indian population showed similar knowledge i.e. 60% with overall average satisfactory knowledge about breast feeding was 39% which may be due to low level of female literacy rate and poor information, education and communication activities (IEC).Study carried out by Wagner et al 8 in U.S. showed that knowledge was 97% may be due to high female educational status.57.2% respondents knew about exclusive breast feeding in present study while study carried out by Borade A 9 , in Pune showed that 48.6% respondents were knew about it, Similar findings were also reported by Kishore SS 7 as knowledge was 46%.
Our study revealed that 54% respondents knew that no prelactal food should give to baby during first 6 months of life.Similar findings were also found by The present study showed that 82.7% respondents knew that breast feeding is a complete food similarly study carried out by Issler H 154 , in Brazil showed that 100 % respondents knew that breast feeding is complete food to baby.The present study showed that low knowledge i.e. 26.4% about breast feeding in maternal illness, 21.3% about size of breast and amount of breast milk secretion & breast feeding in working mother was 24.5% which could be due to not highlighting all aspects of breast feeding to adolescent, married couple and pregnant and lactating mothers.

Conclusion:
The Informing all pregnant women about the benefits and the management of breast-feeding should be done primarily during their ANC visits.

Table II : Knowledge category distribution of respondents Table no II depicts, maximum 352(59.6%) respondents had fair quality of knowledge about breast-feeding.
Table no III depicts, maximum respondents 19 (61.2%), 280 (74.2%) and 88 (48.3%) from age group 31-36,19-24 and 25-30 yrs.had poor, fair and good knowledge about breast-feeding.Similarly 41(65%),149 (77.6%) and 81(39.1%)with primary, secondary & higher secondary had poor, fair and good knowledge about breast feeding.Maximum, 58.2% Christen had good quality of knowledge about breast-feeding as compare to Hindus and Muslims.Almost equal knowledge was observed among urban & rural residence of

Table III : Association between demographic characteristics and knowledge Table IV: Knowledge study variable frequency percentage distribution of primi gravida Discussion:
primary health care services through peripheral health functionaries with co-operation from community itself with other departments of community development.