Factors Associated with Early Weaning

ABSTRACT

Objective: To identify the factors that influenced early weaning and its incidence among children from six months old in five public hospitals of two states - Minas Gerais and Bahia, Brazil. Material and Methods: The sample (N = 104) was of convenience type composed of mothers of six-month-old infants from five public hospitals. Mothers answered a personal interview by phone when the child was six months old. Data analysis was performed by the association between the dependent variable, early weaning, and independents variables, maternal age, mother's marital status, education and job, family income, maternal belief about the amount of milk produced to be or not enough to feed her baby and breastfeeding interruption reason, through the chi-square test in SPSS software version 17.0 (p<0.05). Results: Among the relationships found, only maternal belief in milk failure was significantly associated with early weaning (p <0.001). Most mothers who did not perform early weaning believed they had satisfactory amount of milk (66.7%). The general weaning rate was ≅ 30%. Conclusion: Early weaning was related to maternal belief that the amount of milk was insufficient to meet the needs of the newborn and its incidence was high in the study population.