KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF BREASTFEEDING AMONG WOMEN IN MOSUL – IRAQ

"The vast majority of mothers can and should breastfeed, just as the vast majority of infants can and should be breastfed." In order to evaluate the socio-demographic factors that may be considered risky in maternal knowledge, attitude and practice about breastfeeding which can affect health of infant, a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted by direct interviewing of 197 mothers who have children less than one year of age and visiting healthcare centers for immunization purposes. The age of mothers ranged between 17 – 42 years; the mean maternal age was 26.5 ± 5.6 years. Whereas, the age of infants ranged between five days to one year and the mean age of infants was 4.14 ± 3.13 months, 63.5% of total infants were females. The study showed that percentage of exclusive breastfeeding among study women was 49.2%, and 60.9% of mothers had good knowledge about breast feeding, and it has been found that several factors were significantly affecting maternal knowledge about breastfeeding mainly; high level education, being a housewife, high parity, presence and frequency of antenatal care visits, information received about breastfeeding during these visits and type of infants feeding with statistically significance. While factors affecting breastfeeding practice were; low parity and having antenatal care visits with statistically significant association. The study conducted that 31.0% of mothers gave their babies the first fed immediately after delivery and 28.9% within one hour after delivery, the study also found that the time of first breastfeed has been affected by maternal age and being a housewife mother with statistically significance. 70.9% of mothers who exclusively breastfeed have been satisfied with type of infants' feeding and 77.3% of them feed their babies on demand.