Background: There is a need for promotion and protection of optimal infant feeding practices for improving nutritional
status of children. It is not well established whether breast feeding behavior of improvident is influenced by maternity or
not? Also Improvident and Non-Improvident Mothers do not necessarily respond to health education imparted to them.
Objectives:1) To investigate breastfeeding behaviour of lactating mothers in relation to their maternity status. 2) To evaluate
the impact of health education on Breast Feeding Behaviour. Methods: Results: only 2.2% in baseline survey and 7.7% in
post interventional survey. There were 30.8% mothers in baseline survey and 40.4% mothers in the post interventional
survey who initiated breast feeding even after24 hours. Proportions of mothers giving pre-lacteal feed were found to be
18.7% and 21.2% in the two surveys respectively.
Conclusions and Suggestions: Improvident mothers were more likely to adopt optimal breast feeding practices in terms of
not to give pre-lacteal feeds, giving colostrums and timely start of complimentary feeding etc. There is a need for promotion
and protection of optimal infant feeding practices of mothers irrespective of maternity status