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PATTERN OF CHILDREN'S WEANING IN HAIL, SAUDI ARABIA

Wudian Mahmmad Alshammery, Shroog Khashman Alshammari, Ghena Ghazi Alenezi

Background: Weaning is an important milestone in a baby’s life and weaning practices are strongly associated with culture of a society. Objective: to study the age and pattern of the children's weaning in Hail, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A cross sectional study carried out among 515 mothers attending the PHC centers in Hail city, during the period from 1 March, to 31 July 2018. They interviewed and filled a questionnaire which includes the needed questions. Data were analyzed using SPSS program (version 16). P-value was considered significant if <0.05. Results: Our study reported breast feeding prevalence was 95.9%. The period of breast feeding was1-6 months in 58.6% followed by 7-23 months (completed absolute breastfeeding) in 24.7%. Regarding the causes of weaning, child completed natural feeding period (24 months) in 30.1%, mother's work in 26.2%, mother's intention to get pregnant in 21.6%, to encourage the child to eat in 10.6%, mother's health problem in 8.5% and child health problems in only 2.9%. We found that relatives and parents were the most common mother's source of information about weaning by 62,9% followed by health care providers in 17.5, media in 14.6% and friends in 4.5%. Regarding the weaning food items, in present study we found that 97.1% of children preferred homemade food and only 2.9 % preferred canned food. There was insignificant association between weaning age of the child (in months) with child’s gender, mother’s work status and presence of problems in weaning (p >0.05), significant association with No. of children in the family and mother age group among the studied children (p>0.05). Conclusion: In our study, there was 24.7% only of the mothers completed the period of exclusive breastfeeding in Hail city, Saudi Arabia. Health education of the mothers to increase mothers’ awareness about the importance of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months of age must be conducted. Key words: weaning, causes of weaning, exclusive breastfeeding.

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