Assessment of Maternal General Health and Feeding Pattern of their Infants: A Cross-sectional Study in Iranian Population

Background Various studies have been conducted so far regarding feeding infants exclusively with natural mother milk; various factors, which may influence feeding process, are occupation of mothers, sickness of infants or mother. This study aimed to assess the relationship between maternal general health and feeding pattern of infants. Materials and Methods This cross-sectional study was done in 2016. The society in this study was mothers with infants between 0-6 months referred to Imam Ali hospital (Sari, Iran). Using accessible sampling method, 250 mothers were selected. Then they were divided to two groups of dry-powder-milk (DPM, n = 125), and mother-milk (MM, n = 125). Subsequently, general health of mothers in both groups was assessed via General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Then data were analyzed using the SPSS 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) by descriptive and inferential statistics tests. Results Mean age of mothers in dry-powder-milk (DPM) group, and mother-milk (MM) group was 28.53 ± 5.44 and 27.7 ± 5.15 years old, respectively. In overall results, general health were not significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.34), but only one dimension of general health (Social functioning) had significant differences between MM and DPM groups (p = 0.02). Conclusion Based on results, only one dimension of general health (Social functioning) had significant differences between two groups. So only social functioning had significant relation with feeding pattern of infants. Also, number of children had significant relationship with total score of GHQ. More studies are recommended to earn more detailed results.