Weaning Practices in Mothers of Infants age 6 to 12 months visiting Sandeman Provincial Hospital, Quetta

Abstract

Background: Weaning can be described as gradually increasing the amount of foods other than breast 's milk in the infant's diet. Breast feeding for the first four to six months is recommended by the WHO for a full-term healthy child by a healthy mother. Aim: To find weaning-related factors that contribute, strengthen, and enable mothers of infants under the age of 12 months to obey or not obey guidance for proper infant feeding by World Health Organization's (WHO-2009) Methods: The current research was a cross-sectional descriptive study. From March 2020 to January 2021, pre design performa was used to collect data from 100 mothers of infants under the age of 12 months who lived in Quetta City and visited at OPD department of Sandeman Provincial Hospital in Quetta. .The multiple rounds of data collection were done. The data was analyzed by SPSS 20. Statistical test like chi- square test was applied to obtain the required results. Results: Total 100 babies consist of 41(41%) male and 59(59%) femaleenrolled. The mothers in the sample were on average 27.2 ± 4.2 years old with the age range of 20-40 years. Results showed that mothers of 6-8 months’ kids 18(45%) fully aware about the importance of weaning and feed their children with different soft food along with breast feeding which increased at the age of 8-12 month as 22(73.33%).Majority of mothers, i.e63% were housewives. The social status showed lower middle income 34% and 41% of research participants belonged to the middle income group.The findings showed that 61% mothers had inadequate knowledge about proper child feeding and weaning practice compare with other group as 39% with p-value 0.01. Conclusion: Mothers should be well informed about the benefits and importance of weaning, as well as the age in which weaning should begin and the different forms of weaning diets available. This target can be met with the assistance of LHWs and LHVs, as well as the use of social media. It is important to stress the importance of continuing to breastfeed after weaning. Key words: Mothers; Practices; Infants: Weaning.