Study of knowledge rate of parturient mothers about breast feeding adventages

Mardani M1, Mohsen-zadeh A2, Yari-pour M3 1. Assistant professor, Department of Nutritional, Faculty of medicine, Lorestan University of medical sciences 2. Assistant professor, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of medicine, Lorestan University of medical sciences 3. PhD Student, Faculty of medicine, Lorestan University of medical sciences Abstract Background: Mothers milk is the only nourishing source in the first six months of life. If it is suitable and enough, all nutrients and reguired energe will be provided for a breast–fed to grow. Insufficient knowledge and information, wrong beliefs and traditional information about a breast – fed, working out side the home and the desire of working mothers to feed their children with powdered milk and to start the implementary feeding very early. The increasing of mothers willing to abdominal delivery and being away from the child in the first golden hours and misleading advertisements about powdered milk are all some reasons of decreasing the desire to mothers milk and increasing desire to powdered milk. Therefor, the aim of this study is to consider mothers knowledge about the importance of breast – feeding. Materials and methods: In this study, we completed questionnaires with seventeen questions to parturient mothers who came to Asali hospital in 2006 which included some variables such as benefits of breast feeding, the mother’s milk composition. The information was extracted and analyzed by SPSS software. Results: From 550 parturient mothers who came to Asali hospital in 2006, 33 mothers (6 percent) had low knowledge, 216 of them (39 percent) had medium knowledge and 301 of them (55 percent) had high knowledge. This study indicates that regardless to consider some variables, mothers knowledge has been very high and also there is a significantl relationship between mothers age and their knowledge. The average age of low – knowledge mothers was 26, the medium knowledge was 28 and the high- knowledge was 31. In other words, mothers who have more children, have more knowledge. There is significant relationship between the mother’s education and her knowledge which means the higher educated the mother was the more knowledge she had. The mothers who worked outside of home had more knowledge compared to those whom didn’t. In this research, it was shown that there isn any sinificant relationship between family income and the mothers knowledge. However there has been a reasonable relationship between mothers educations and their knowledge. More education, more knowledge about the importance of breast – feeding. Among working mothers, we can see that their knowledge is more than housewives. Mothers living in cities have more knowledge more than whom live in villages. Conclusion: According to findings, the amount of knowledge is relatively good, but still, most of them have not required knowledge about children nourishing, espetially those mothers whom are young and those whom live in villages. Therefore, we must pay more attention to mothers who live in villages.