Factors Affecting the Duration of Breastfeeding in a Rural Population of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

A study was conducted to demonstrate factors influencing duration of breastfeeding in Al-Jamoom Western region of Saudi Arabia. Information was obtained on 476 children under the age of three years and their mothers in nine of the villages in this area. A predesigned questionnaire was administered to the mothers to obtain information on age, education, fertility parameters and antenatal care during pregnancy with the index children. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the effect of different biological and environmental factors on the duration of breastfeeding. The data showed that over 57% of the mothers breastfed their children for more than a year, and the mean duration of breastfeeding was 14.61 +/- 3.53 months. A considerable proportion of the mothers (42.3%) stopped breastfeeding during the first year. The most common reason for terminating breastfeeding during the first year was insufficient milk (30.9%), and recurrence of pregnancy (27.3%). A minority of the mothers (6.5%) were given advice about breastfeeding by health care professionals (physicians and nurses). Other factors such as the age of the mother, age of the infant when a supplement diet was first introduced, birth order of the child and attendance in an antenatal care clinic had a significant effect on the duration of breastfeeding. It is therefore recommended that Maternal and Child Health services must be strongly reinforced in the Primary Health Care Centers of the Ministry of Health and other health care providers.

Breastfeeding in Saudi Arabia: a review

“…The age range of infants included in the studies (and hence length of recall) varied across a wide range of ages. Four studies [18-20,29] asked mothers about feeding their infants in the last five years, four studies [21,23,24,27] included infants less than 2.5 years, and five studies investigated feeding practices in infants aged less than 12 months [30-34]. Three studies [22,26,28] included infants 6 months or younger, while one study included infants and children 0–9 years old [35].…”

“…However, those studies which used the WHO definition reported that the ‘exclusive breastfeeding’ rate at six months of age ranged from 1.7% [26] to 24.4% [28]. Other studies found low rates of ‘exclusive breastfeeding’ at six months after birth: 0.8% [19]; 8.9% [24] and 5.6% [35]. On the other hand, two national surveys recorded relatively high rates of ‘exclusive breastfeeding’ at six months of age of 33% and 38%, respectively [18,20].…”

“…Although the graph of the ‘mean breastfeeding duration’ based on the seven studies that calculated it [18-24] does not show a perfect linear regression, there is a declining trend in the ‘mean breastfeeding duration’ over time (Figure 2). While the ‘mean breastfeeding duration’ was as high as 13.4 months in 1987, it has dropped to only 6.8 months in 1999 and 8.5 months in 2010 (Table 2 and Figure 2).…”

“…Just over half of these studies (eight papers) concluded that the prevalence of breastfeeding was higher with longer duration among older mothers compared to their younger counterparts [18,20,21,23,24,29,34,35]. Results from a recent study revealed that increased maternal age was significantly associated with early initiation of breastfeeding (within 24 hours of delivery) (odds ratio [OR] = 2.24, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.37-3.68, p -value = 0.016); with longer duration ( p -value = 0.001) and with exclusivity of breastfeeding (OR = 1.14, 95% CI = 1.03-1.23, p -value = 0.034) [21].…”

“…There were only seven studies that reported mean breastfeeding duration [18-24]. The seven means of breastfeeding duration were entered to Microsoft Excel® as values of Y-axis, and the years of the seven studies were entered as values of X-axis.…”