Complementary feeding among a sample of Iraqi women

Abstract

On asking the mothers from where they obtained their information about complementary
feeding, the majority of them came from family 297 mothers, who represent 74.3%, while
70 mothers (17.5 %) obtained their information from the pediatrician, while the media
share only 7.2% from the sample, and at least; from friends only 1%, while trying to
compare these results with other studies we found that its compatible with the result of
Seema Hasnain and his colleagues, in which they found 78% of mothers obtain advice
regarding complementary feeding was given by family members while in 23% mothers
by doctors(32)
While evaluating the types of food introduced to the infant, we classify our sample into
three groups according to what they had been taken. The first group represents infants
who took all the essentials ingredients, which represents the adequate feeding group
which represents 81.8%; while infants who lack one essential ingredient represent the
partially adequate feeding group which represents 17 %, while the non-adequate group
represents only 1.2 %
Our results disagree with a study conducted in India that revealed that 32% of mothers were
given an adequate quantity of complementary feeds; this might be due to the difference
in cultural beliefs and sample size since they took 200 infants.33 We discovered that the
introduction of food did not dramatically change with age related to the mother age P
value 0.466; these results seem to be similar to the results obtained by S.Rao in which
he and his colleagues found that there is no statistical relation between maternal age at
the time when food was first introduced (p-value 0.218).33
The mothers` educational status highly statically influences the age of food introduction
to the infants since the P value was 0.0001, and these results are compatible with S. Rao
and his colleague’s results. (33)
We found the mother’s occupation influences the age of introduction of food since the P
value is 0.003, and these results are compatible with the results of a study conducted in
Pakistan by Razia Chaudry and Naheed Humayun 2007 which revealed that the mothers’
occupation is highly related to the date of food’s introduction (p-value 0.001.