RESUMO
Objective: Breast feeding has many advantages. Our objective is to determine influential factors on duration of exclusive breast feeding until 6 months of age and total breast feeding until 2 years
Methods: A retrospective transversal study was made on 271 mothers of children aged between 2 and 5 years. The objective of study was to determinate factors which influence duration of exclusive and total breastfeeding. Epi-info was used to size and to analyse results, odds ratio and confiding intervals were calculated. Logistic regression method was also used
Results and Comments: Duration of exclusive breastfeeding was longer when mother instruction was less than higher school [3,4 months versus 2,9 months, p <0,01], if there were not any maternal complications on breastfeeding period [4,3 months versus 3,1 months, p < 0,001]. Duration of total breast feeding was longer when cow milk was introduced later and child sucking was important [more than 6 times a day]. There was no correlation between weight and length of children and duration of breastfeeding
Conclusion: We recommend promotion of breastfeeding