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

BACKGROUND: Exclusive nutrition with breastfeeding is the health provider of the infant and mothers and its continuing would provide more advantages. Exclusive nutrition on different communities is affected by different factors. This study aimed to determine continuous exclusive breastfeeding and some of the related factors. METHODS: This was a descriptive-analysis prospective study. The study population included all the breastfed mothers admitted in the obstetrics wards of the selected hospitals. Selecting the hospitals also was done randomly. Data collection tools 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 using descriptive and analytical statistics and software SPSS. RESULTS: Estimation of mean and standard deviation of exclusive breastfeeding duration at the first and sixth months after the delivery, respectively, were 3.86 (0.55) and 23.67 (6.63) weeks. One month after the delivery, 93.1%, 6.2% and 0.7% of the mothers, respectively, had exclusive breastfeeding, breastfeeding with formula milk or other ingredients and discontinuation of breastfeeding; 6 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 related to 1-4 weeks. The results indicated that statistically there was a significant correlation between breastfeeding duration and 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 applied baby-friendly hospitals strategies. Furthermore, to prevent from discontinuation of exclusive breastfeeding, knowing 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.