WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Dr. Bashar Hashim Abbass*, Dr. Jeehan Shaker Hassan* and Dr. Hiba Basil Younis**

ABSTRACT

"The vast majority of mothers can and should breastfeed, just as the vast majority of infants can and should bebreastfed." In order to evaluate the socio-demographic factors that may be considered risky in maternalknowledge, attitude and practice about breastfeeding which can affect health of infant, a descriptive crosssectionalstudy conducted by direct interviewing of 197 mothers who have children less than one year of age andvisiting healthcare centers for immunization purposes. The age of mothers ranged between 17 – 42 years; themean maternal age was 26.5 ± 5.6 years. Whereas, the age of infants ranged between five days to one year and themean age of infants was 4.14 ± 3.13 months, 63.5% of total infants were females. The study showed thatpercentage of exclusive breastfeeding among study women was 49.2%, and 60.9% of mothers had goodknowledge about breast feeding, and it has been found that several factors were significantly affecting maternalknowledge about breastfeeding mainly; high level education, being a housewife, high parity, presence andfrequency of antenatal care visits, information received about breastfeeding during these visits and type of infantsfeeding with statistically significance. While factors affecting breastfeeding practice were; low parity and havingantenatal care visits with statistically significant association. The study conducted that 31.0% of mothers gavetheir babies the first fed immediately after delivery and 28.9% within one hour after delivery, the study also foundthat the time of first breastfeed has been affected by maternal age and being a housewife mother with statisticallysignificance. 70.9% of mothers who exclusively breastfeed have been satisfied with type of infants' feeding and77.3% of them feed their babies on demand.