ABSTRACT

Breast feeding is the feeding of an infant or young child with breast milk directly from the female human breast rather than a baby bottle or container. Infant and young child feeding is the corner stone of assuring growth and congnitive development in children. The use of bottle feeding and pacifier is discourage as it is associated with poor hygiene and risk of gastrointestinal infection to the infant exclusive breastfeeding has been recommended the world over, as the optimal feeding mode for infants. In Nigeria, various factors such as unsafe water, unhygienic handling of food, storage of food at ambient temperature for a long time and poor domestic and personal hygiene are all associated with diarrhea diseases can occur mainly in bottle feed babies. The specific objective of the study is to: determine social-demographic and social economic characteristics of mothers practicing exclusive breast feeding in Ukehe Igbo Etiti L.G.A of Enugu State, identify the numbers of mothers practicing exclusive breast feeding in Ukehe Igbo Etiti L.G.A of Enugu State, determine the factors inhibiting exclusive breast feeding in Ukehe Igbo Etiti L.G.A of Enugu State and determine the factors encouraging exclusive breast feeding in  Igbo Etiti L.G.A of Enugu state. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional survey. In conclusion, This study has showed that mothers were knowledgeable of the importance of breastfeeding and about 85% of them had good knowledge of exclusive breastfeeding and a mean score of 50.14 was recorded indicating that there is good knowledge about exclusive breast feeding within the nursing mothers in the study area The overall responses of the nursing mothers showed that majority of them had positive attitudes towards exclusive breast feeding in the study area. The result of the study also affirms that majority of the nursing mothers practise exclusive breast feeding in the study area.