Continuous exclusive breastfeeding and some related factors in the selected hospitals of Isfahan

BACKGROUND: Exclusive breastfeeding is beneficial for infants and mothers and its continuation can provide more advantages. Exclusive nutrition in different communities is affected by different factors. This study aimed to determine duration of exclusive breastfeeding and some of the related factors.METHODS: This was a descriptive-analytical prospective study. The study population included all the breastfeeding mothers admitted in the obstetrics wards of the selected hospitals. The hospitals were randomly selected. Data collection tool included a questionnaire completed by 291 mothers. To obtain the data about breastfeeding duration, mothers were phone called at the first and sixth postpartum months. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical statistics through SPSS.RESULTS: Estimation of mean and standard deviation of exclusive breastfeeding duration at the first and sixth months after the delivery were 3.86 (0.55) and 23.67 (6.63) weeks respectively. One month after the delivery, 93.1%, 6.2% and 0.7% of the mothers had exclusive breastfeeding, breastfeeding with formula milk or other ingredients and discontinuation of breastfeeding respectively. Six months after the delivery, these values changed to 86.3, 12 and 1.7%, respectively. The most frequent period of breastfeeding discontinuation (6.9%) was for 1-4 weeks. The results indicated that there was asignificant correlation between breastfeeding duration and the age and the birth hospital. While the results of the study showed no association between breastfeeding duration and number of the children, duration of marriage, educational level and mothers’ occupation. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the present study represented a high continuous exclusive breastfeeding which perhaps was due to the applied baby-friendly hospitals strategies. Furthermore, knowing about the discontinuation time and its related factors (particularly the first four postpartum weeks) can increase the knowledge of the health staff about counseling and education as a way to prevent discontinuation of exclusive breastfeeding.