Background

Breastfeeding is the natural way of feeding an infant with mother’s milk by direct nipple contact with the baby’s mouth in order to provide nutritional, metabolic and physiological needs, as well as to protect the baby from morbidity and mortality. However, inadequate knowledge and negative attitudes lowers the prevalence rate of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) among rural mothers.

Objectives

To assess the level of knowledge, attitudes and practice of breastfeeding among rural women and to determine the factors that affect this practice.

Material and methods

This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted on 130 conveniently selected mothers aged 18–35 years having at least one child (aged 1 week to 6 years). Simple descriptive statistics were used to identify the general characteristics of the participants, where univariate logistic regression was used to determine the factors considering p-values less than < 0.01 and < 0.05.

Results

Most of the women had a positive attitude towards breastfeeding, where 68.46% of mothers had properly given breast milk to their children up until 6 months, while 91.6% fed them colostrum; respectively, 78.5% and 73.1% of mothers washed their hands and cleaned their baby’s mouth before and after the child’s mouth contact with the breast. The mother’s age and education (OR = 0.428 [CI = 0.176–1.039] p < 0.001), (OR = 1.627 [CI = 0.870–3.046] p < 0.001), the father’s education and occupation (OR = 0.987 [CI = 0.828–1.177] p < 0.001), (OR = 0.906 [CI = 0.574–1.429] p < 0.005) and dwellings structure (OR = 2.555 [CI =0.722–9.042] p < 0.001) are associated with the practice of breastfeeding.

Conclusions

Breastfeeding and EBF should be promoted through primary care and counseling programs together with programs designed to uplift the socio-economic status of rural women.