Skilled Counseling in Enhancing Early and Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates: An Experimental Study in an Urban Population in India

Objective: The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of breastfeeding counseling and breastfeeding support by trained counselors during the ante-natal period at health facility and post-natal period at home on breastfeeding practices during the first six months of life.

Design: This was a randomized controlled study that compared the effect of counseling on breastfeeding during the first 6 months of life.

Setting: study was done in a government medical college in northern India, which is situated in an urban area.

Participants: 300 healthy pregnant women from an urban population attending the antenatal clinic at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University were recruited for the study.

Intervention: Subjects were equally assigned randomly to the intervention (2 antenatal and 8 postpartum home counseling visits by the counselors) and control (non-counseling) group.

Main Outcome Measures: Infant feeding practices including rates of initiation of the breastfeeding within one hour of birth; exclusive breastfeeding and bottle-feeding during the first 6 months of life.

Results: Initiation of breastfeeding within one hour of birth was 73.4% in intervention group as compared to 33.6% in control group (P=0.001). More mothers in the intervention group (88.2%) were able to sustain exclusive breastfeeding rates at 6 months of age in comparison to the control group (50%) (OR 7.44, 95% CI 3.98-13.92).

Conclusions: This study substantiates positive role of skilled counseling by a trained dedicated breastfeeding counselor during the antenatal and post-natal periods on breastfeeding practices during the first six months of life.