the pregnant mothers' knowledge about breastfeeding in semnan, iran

conclusions a significant number of pregnant mothers had average knowledge that indicating necessity of interventional programs by health system, particularly for pregnant mothers with lower education level. background breastfeeding is accepted as the most desirable method of infant nurturing. objectives this study aimed to investigate pregnant mothers’ knowledge about breastfeeding as well as to study its associated factors. patients and methods this was a cross-sectional study evaluating the knowledge of 400 pregnant mothers who were referred to semnan province health centers. data collection was performed via questionnaires and the scores were calculated. one point was considered for correct answers and zero for incorrect or “do not know” replies. the relative frequency of correct responses for every person was calculated. mothers who answered less than 20% of the questions correctly were considered to have a very poor knowledge. scores between 2.0 and 3.9 were the ones with poor knowledge, those with 4.0 to 5.9, 6.0 to 7.9, and larger than or equal to 8.0 were considered to have an average, good, and very good knowledge, respectively. results overall, 1%, 5%, 43.8%, 42.5%, and 7.8% of mothers had very poor, poor, average, good, and very good level of knowledge about breastfeeding. there was a significant association between mothers’ knowledge and mothers’ education, breastfeeding history, and parity; however, no significant association was found with age and the month of pregnancy. the most frequent source of obtaining information was health centers’ personnel (34.3%) followed by family and friends. the highest percentage of proper response, i.e. 95.5% and 90.5%, were related to questions on necessity of exclusive breastfeeding and its continuation for six month of life, respectively; the lowest percentage of proper response, i.e. 11.8% and 18%, belonged to questions concerning expressed milk storage time in the refrigerator and freezer, respectively.