Feeding practices and growth in Yemeni children

The growth and nutritional status of the breast-fed infant

The literature on the relationship between early infant feeding and growth shows that after the first 3 or 4 months, breast-fed infants in the developed world are lighter than formula-fed infants with markedly lower adiposity. There is some evidence of a slightly lower rate of linear growth over the first year or so. These differences in weight and length do not apparently persist beyond the first few years of life. In the developing world the situation is very different. The growth curves of breast-fed infants of malnourished mothers may falter between the third and sixth month of life. However, the generally poor quality of the supplementary foods offered in the developing world and the increased risk of diarrhoeal infections mean that supplementary feeding before the age of 6 months is unlikely to lead to a growth advantage and may well lead to growth faltering.

Breast‐feeding patterns in Saudi Arabia

A survey was conducted on 1019 mothers in 79 primary health care centers in Saudi Arabia to determine the patterns of breast feeding. A large percentage of mothers (98%) had breastfed their infants at birth. This rate dropped to 96.5% during the first week of life. There were 635 (64.1%) mothers who started to breastfeed their babies within 6 hours of delivery. Over two-thirds (68.9%) of mothers gave supplemental liquids to infants during the first 3 days of their life. More than half fed their infants on demand rather than on schedule. A high proportion (94.4%) breastfed at night, with 88.1% feeding their infants more than once. There was no significant relationship between the duration of suckling and the mother's age or work status (p 0.05). However, a significant relationship (p 0.001) was found between the duration of suckling and the mother's literacy. More than three-quarters of mothers slept in the same bed with their infants or in the same room. A large percentage of women initiated breast feeding; however, many introduced a supplement too early, a practice that should be discouraged.

Child growth and duration of breast feeding in urban Zambia

STUDY OBJECTIVE

The aim was to investigate the relationship between duration of breast feeding and growth of children.

DESIGN

The study was a survey of randomly selected clusters of households.

SETTING

The study was community based and took place in an urban township with a population of over 43,000 people in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia.

PARTICIPANTS

The sample consisted of 438 children aged 0 to 59 months surveyed between October 1984 and June 1986. Due to missing information, 394 children were used in the analysis.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

After controlling for confounding variables, duration of breast feeding was found to be associated with height for age among children in their first two years of life, but not in the later years of life. There was no significant protective effect of breast feeding on undernutrition and acute malnutrition as measured by weight for age and weight for height.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that, in this community, duration of breast feeding is strongly associated with the linear growth experiences of children and the association changes with the infant's age. One strong risk factor suspected to be responsible for the poor growth performance of children in this study is the low nutritional quality of the weaning foods which are used to supplement breast milk during the lengthy weaning period.