Assessment of Knowledge and Practice about Self Expressed Breast Milk among Saudi Mothers in Jazan Region, KSA, 2016

Aim: To assess mother's knowledge and attitude regarding self-expressed milk in Jazan, Saudi Arabia.

Methodology: Study Area: An observational and cross sectional study done in Obstetric Department (Well Baby and immunization Clinics) in King Fahd Central Hospital (KFCH), Jazan, Saudi Arabia and in six PHCCs in Jazan (randomly selected) from December 2016 - March 2017. Pregnant women who delivered babies before and post-partum women in Obstetric departments, Obstetric outpatient clinic, mother’s in well baby, and immunization clinics in mentioned areas were included in the study. Stratified multistage sampling techniques were used. N = 499 Saudi mothers calculated according to survey system with confidence level % 95. The questionnaire was self-administering questionnaire (in Arabic language). All data processed via Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19. Shapiro-Wilk test. Kruskal-Wallis test used to see the association between level of knowledge and practice with demographic variables that contains more than 2 variables. Mann-Whitney test and Spearman correlation were used.

Results: Total of 499 mothers was participating aged 30±7 years with mean number of kids 2.98 ± 2. Mothers heard about self-expressed breast milks accounts 73.5% and 236 mothers of them were practice it. Both level of knowledge and practice accuracy were inadequate. Around one third of mothers heard about it from social media. More than third of the women practice it because of work related issues. The higher the educational level was the higher knowledge (p<0.001). Age and number of kids, has no statistically significant effect on the knowledge level (P = 0.417, 0.285). Working mothers have higher knowledge level than house wife and students (p<0.001), nurses especially who toke breast feeding teaching have higher knowledge level than physicians then teachers (p<0.001). Mothers who toke their knowledge from breast feeding courses have the highest knowledge level followed by medical stuffs other than physicians followed by social media and internet websites then physicians then mothers and last are friends (p<0.001). Mothers with more accurate practice were more knowledgeable than mothers with less accurate practices (p<0.001).

Conclusion: Mothers knowledge and practice regarding self-expressed breast milk needed to be improved in order to give the babies better chance for exclusive breast feeding. Breast feeding courses for mothers give better results in term of accuracy of mother’s knowledge and practice of expressed breast milk.