Acceso usuarios
Rosa María Correia Jerónimo Pedroso, Dulce María Pereira García Galvao, Florencio Vicente Castro
The return to work has been mentioned by working mothers as a cause of breastfeeding cessation.
A cross-sectional descriptive study was developed to study the practices and constraints to breast- feeding among working mothers/students after returning to work/school activities in public higher insti- tutions in Coimbra, as well as to assess the factors which facilitate/impede the maintenance of breast- feeding. A questionnaire was applied to a sample of 109 working mothers and 121 students, with healthy children born in the past five years and a gestational age above 34 weeks.
It was concluded that only 34.8% of the mothers continued to breastfeed for more than six months after returning to work and 27.8% did it for less than one month, 57.8% pumped and stored breast milk, 62.2% exercised their working mother/student rights, 72.2% did not travel during work hours to breast- feed, 95.7% had no one to bring their child to work to breastfeed, and 54.3% experienced personal con-straints to maintain breastfeeding. Work/school colleagues (92.6%) and superiors/teachers (84.8%) knew about the breastfeeding.
Mothers who had support from the family (64.7%) and from colleagues (64.8%), with a facilitating situation at work (58.6%) and that did not feel tired (52.5%) continued to breastfeed for a longer peri- od of time.
It will be important to raise the awareness of education institutions about the importance of con- tinuing to breastfeed and the fact that all working mothers/students should have the necessary condi- tions and support to continue to breastfeed.
