Factors that enhance exclusive breastfeeding inteenaged mothers Factores que favorecen la lactancia materna exclusiva en madres adolescentes

Abstract

Background: Despite the WHO recommending that “If every child was breastfed within an hour of birth, given only breast milk for their first six months of life, and continued breastfeeding up to the age of two years, about 800 000 child lives would be saved every year.”, during the 2007 Global Meeting of Consensus organized by the World Health Organization about the Indicators for assessing infant and young child feeding practices, it was proven that in reality there is a decreasing percentage of children that are breastfed exclusively and recognize that “Supporting the mother is essential”. Objective: To stablish factors that enhance exclusive breastfeeding in teenaged mothers of exclusively breast feeding in teenage moms. Methods: Analytic observational study of 158 teenage moms in the breast feeding stage that attended to the Empresa Social del Estado Instituto de Salud de Bucaramanga (ESE ISABU) services during the second semester of 2011 and first semester of 2012. EPI Info 6.04d was used to calculate the data, and Stata 10.1 to analyze it. The multivariable analysis was made using prevalence ratios and their confidence intervals of 95%. As there was no previous hypothesis, a bivariate analysis was made and for the multivariate analysis all variables with p < 0.2 were used. In the final model only variables with a p<0.05 were included. Two instruments were applied: one to characterize families and the second, the family APGAR, to evaluate family functionality. Results: On average, teenage moms that participated in the study were 17.9 years old, 24% had exclusively breast fed for 6 months. Factors associated to breast feeding exclusively were: Support from health centers, influence from mother and mother in law, feelings of happiness when breast feeding and the family’s vital cycle. Conclusions: Support from the family and the health institutions are factors that support a breast feeding-exclusive behavior in teenaged mothers.