ABSTRACT

The first two years of life are a critical window for ensuring optimal child growth and development. Improving infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices through appropriate complementary feeding in children aged 0–23 months is therefore critical to improved nutrition, health, and development. This study examines the complementary feeding practices and anthropometric status of children in some selected rural areas in Enugu State. The study was a cross-sectional study and a multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 308 respondents. Data on socio-demographic/economic characteristics, knowledge, attitude, utilization of complementary foods and anthropometric status of the infants were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. The IBM SPSS version 23.0 computer programme was used to analyse the data. WHO anthro was used to analyze the anthropometric status of the infants. Data obtained were described using frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Results from the study showed that most (65.6%) of the respondents were between 18 years and 35 years. Majority (85.8%) of the women are married and live with their husbands. Majority (98.7%) of the respondents still breastfed their children. However, all (100.0%) the respondents give their infants other foods apart from breast milk. More than half (53.6%) of the respondents started giving their infants complementary foods from 3-4 months. Meanwhile, some of the respondents use complementary foods made using locally available food items like mashed yam (5.5%), mashed rice (3.6%), mashed potatoes (7.8%), pap from maize (7.5%), pap from millet (12.4%), soup and eba (32.1%) and mashed beans (1.3%). More than half (50.6%)of the women give their children these homemade foods because it is prepared from what their family eats. Majority (97.4%) of the respondents also use commercial baby foods. Additionally, some (47.7%) of the respondents had an average knowledge on complementary feeding practices while most (83.4%) of them had a negative attitude towards complementary feeding practices. From the anthropometric indices of the infants, 17.4% were wasted, 13.9% of them were stunted, 21.7% of them were underweight, 7.1% of them were overweight while 3.2% were obese. There was a significant relationship (p=0.011) between knowledge and attitude of mothers towards complementary feeding. There was a significant relationship (p=0.000) between knowledge of mothers on complementary feeding and weight-for height of the children. There was also a significant relationship between knowledge (p=0.004) and attitude (0.001) of the mothers and BMI-for weight of the children. All mothers should be empowered to be able to make the optimal infant-feeding decision, which will be in the best interests of herself, her infant and her family.