Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part C (2025)

Background: “Breast is best" for babies and is a worldwide concept. Inspite of worldwide campaign for promotions of breast feeding, achievements are not as desired. Infant feeding is affected by many factors such as socio-economic status, maternal education and place of living. Breast feeding saves up to 5.9 million of baby’s lives every year and is the infant's first immunization against all the infectious diseases. Breastfeeding is the important practice for appropriate and adequate care and feeding of infants, it also has nutritional, immunological, developmental, psychological, social, economical and environmental benefits for infants, mothers, family and society.
Methodology: A quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental one-group pretest post-test research design was used. Study included 61 mothers of infants aged between 29 days to 12 months. A non-probability purposive sampling technique was used. Data collection was done using demographic variables, self-structured knowledge questionnaire and practice checklist, followed by an educational intervention.
Results: The pretest results indicated that majority of the mothers had average knowledge (78.69%), 16.39% of mothers had poor knowledge, and 4.92% had good knowledge regarding infant’s feeding habit. The post-test results showed significant improvement, with 78.69% of mothers demonstrating good knowledge with a mean difference of 5.84. Practice levels also improved significantly, with 88.52% of mothers showing good practice in the post-test compared to 42.63% in the pretest with a mean difference of 5.41. The paired t-test showed a significant increase in both knowledge (t-value: 24.82) and practice scores (t-value: 6.075) post-intervention (p < 0.001). However, after comparing both the results of post intervention of knowledge and practice, it was found that there was more significant positive effect on enhancing mothers’ knowledge as compared to practice related to feeding habit of infants.
Conclusion: The study concludes that the educational package effectively improved the knowledge and practices of mothers regarding infant feeding.