Factors of Mother’s Success in Exclusive Breastfeeding

Introduction: The efforts to end hunger in connection to the second goal of the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) is part of a wider nutritional intervention. One of the interventions is exclusive breastfeeding. This study aims to analyze knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, health education, early breastfeeding initiation, rooming in with their infants, and the promotion of infant formula that can influence the success of exclusive breastfeeding. Methods: This study used an analytic survey with a case control approach and a questionnaire given to the mothers with infants aged 6-12 months. The case population consisted of mothers who provide exclusive breastfeeding and the control population consisted of mothers who did not provide exclusive breastfeeding. We used the logistic regression method for the final test. Results: The mothers who did not receive the promotion of infant formula (p=0.002) had a 3.960 times higher chance of providing exclusive breastfeeding compared to the mothers receiving the promotional activities of infant formula. Mothers with a good level of knowledge (p=0.013) had 0.275 times more chance of giving exclusive breastfeeding compared to the mothers with insufficient knowledge. There were other variables that did not affect the predictors of exclusive breastfeeding (attitudes, self-efficacy, health education, early breastfeeding initiation, and rooming-in). Conclusion: Breastfeeding health education programs and receiving no promotional campaign of infant formula feeding are required for breastfeeding success. Increased access to breastfeeding counselors, and the monitoring and evaluation of infant formula promotion within the health services are both very important to increase the success of exclusive breastfeeding.