Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Expressing Breastmilk to Achieve Exclusive Breastfeeding Among Working Mothers in Kiambu County, Kenya

The Kenyan constitution entitles mothers to a three-month maternity leave, meaning that a Kenyan mother has a deficit of 3 months to achieve this recommendation. Expressing breastmilk is essential for Kenyan working mothers to achieve the recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding (6 months). The study aimed to analyze the characteristics and practices of working mothers expressing breastmilk with an aim of achieving exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months. This study adopted a cross sectional study design. The study involved 203 working mothers with infants below six months, solicited from four hospitals in Kiambu County, Kenya. A researcher administered semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic, knowledge and practice data. A five point Likert scale was used to collect data on the attitudes of the working mothers towards expressing breastmilk. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. More than half (59.4%) of the mothers had not received information on expressing breastmilk. Mothers expressed a positive attitude that breastmilk could be expressed by hand, stored breastmilk was ideal for feeding infants and storing breastmilk correctly could aid in achieving exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months. A minority of the participants (36.9%) had expressed breastmilk. Mothers who had knowledge on expressing were 8 times more likely to express breastmilk ([OR]: 8.224; CI 4.307-15.703; p<0.001). This demonstrated that knowledge levels on expressing had a significant association with the practice of expressing breastmilk. Therefore, dissemination of knowledge on expressing needs to be boosted, with an aim of improving expressing and breastfeeding outcomes.