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Volume 7 Issue 9 (September, 2019)

Original Articles

Assessment of Feeding Practices of Young Children Less Than 2 Years of Age
Purva Jain, Harshita Shah, Vikas Gupta, Vijay Kamale

Background: Every infant and child has the right to good nutrition according to the convection of the rights of the children. WHO, UNICEF, and USAID recommends early initiation of breastfeeding within 1 hour of birth, exclusive breastfeeding for first 6 months of life, the introduction of nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods after 6 months together with continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond. Aim of the study: To assess feeding practices of young children less than 2 years of age. Materials and methods: A descriptive survey was conducted in the pediatric OPD of tertiary care hospital of India with an objective to assess feeding practices in infants and young children less than 2 years and to find out association of feeding practices with selected demographic variables. Mothers of 200 patients in age group of less than 2years attending pediatric OPD were selected by total enumeration sampling method between 26/07/2019 to 2/08/2019 period. The tool consisted of two parts one for 0 - 6 months infants feeding practice assessment and other for 7 - 24 months child’s feeding practice assessment. Results: Among breastfed babies, approximately half 49.4% received breast milk after 12 hours of birth and about 37.8% received breast milk within half an hour to 2 hours after birth. About 2/3 were breastfed every 2 hourly in a day and a very few 8.4% were fed on demand by mother. Nearly 89.4% mothers gave feed to their infants from both breasts. About 40% of mothers take average breast feeding time of less than 30 minutes to breast feed the child. About 88.4% of mothers have enough breast milk supply and out of those who were not having enough breast milk, about 6.3% of mothers use home remedies for enough breast milk supply. Conclusion: Good nutrition forms the basic foundation of health throughout the life of person. Almost all of the mothers gave breastfeeding to their children however they were not breast feed their child exclusively. It is also concluded that time of initiation of breast feeding after delivery was delayed in majority of them. But frequency of breastfeeding in a day was better. In complementary feeding it is observed that initiation of complementary feeding at the recommended time of 6 months was seen majority of children. Majority of the children like food group grains which include food items such as dalia, chapatti, rice, porridge and biscuits. However, there is need to inform the mothers about the timing, consistency, frequency and quality of complementary food item. Key words: Breast feeding, feeding practice, 2 years old children.

 
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