Factors related to early weaning in babies born at term in a public maternity.

Purpose: to analyze how socioeconomic, pregnancy and childbirth factors relate to the feeding situation in the sixth month of life of full-term babies.

Methods: longitudinal observational study, with 98 mothers of full-term babies. Data collection was structured by capturing information regarding the clinical history and moment of birth in the babies' medical records, followed by the application of two questionnaires to the postpartum women, with questions regarding sociodemographic data, pre- and post-pregnancy data and the baby's nutrition. baby, the first being answered during hospital stay and the second, by telephone, in the 6th month of life. A descriptive analysis of the data was performed, using the frequency distribution of categorical variables, inferential analysis using Pearson's Chi-square test and multivariate analysis using binary logistic regression, adopting, for inclusion in the final model, the significance level of 5%.

Results: there was an association between exclusive breastfeeding in the 6th month and maternal education and between the period of food introduction and family income. Mothers with higher education were 4.82 times more likely to breastfeed their children exclusively until the sixth month. Families with lower income (up to one minimum wage) were 2.54 times more likely to start food introduction before the sixth month than families with higher income.

Conclusion: higher maternal education was a predictive factor for exclusive breastfeeding at the 6th month and higher military income was a predictive factor for introducing food after the 6th month.