Mothers’ Knowledge and Attitude toward Exclusive Breastfeeding

Exclusive breastfeeding protects infants from diseases in the first 6-months of life. Awareness and attitude affect breastfeeding performance.This study assessed maternal awareness and attitude toward breastfeeding in Alzahra Hospital, a baby friendly, in Rasht, Iran.

To determine knowledge and attitudes of mothers on various aspects of breastfeeding and factors related to them among mothers under postpartum, Alzahra educational, medical and research center.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 384 post-natal mothers. It was done by sampling and simple random in post-partom unit of Alzahra Hospital, Rasht. A questionnaire consisting of 3 main parts; demographic information, knowledge and attitude, was used in the study. Attitude and knowledge scores were also calculated. Data were analyzed by Man-Whitney, Kurskal-Wallis and Spearman Correlation Coefficient tests, using SPSS-software in version21.

In this study, 32.6% had good levels of knowledge about breastfeeding and majority of them (39.1%) had an average knowledge. All of mothers had positive attitude, but 20.3% of mothers had more positive attitude and most of individuals (67.2%) were in the intermediate state and the rest had a more negative attitude. In the multivariate analysis in the regression logestic model attitude status (P<0.0001), experience of breastfeeding(P=0.006), breastfeeding training (P=0.004), income (P=0.03) and mother’s job (P=0.001) were anticipating factors of high knowledge, and the status of knowledge(P=0.043), mothers’education(P=0.004), natural delivery compared to cesarean section  (P=0.008), type of infant’s feeding (P=0.0001) were anticipating factors related to positive attitude status. Also, a significant poor positive relationship was found between age and the score of knowledge (r=0.158, P=0.002) and attitude (r=0.128, P=0.062).

A significant number of mothers had moderate knowledge about breastfeeding, which necessitates intervention programming, especially for mothers with low levels of education.