Abstract:
Background: - Employed women tend to exclusively breastfeed less than non-employed women. Early
returning to work has been major reason why employed women stop exclusive breastfeeding. Exclusive
breastfeeding cessation leads to high mortality-related diarrheal disease in sub-Saharan countries, and
Cessation of EBF increases the risk of pneumonia morbidity and related death, excessive diarrhea, and
low growth rate compared to exclusively breastfed infants.
Objective: - To assess the prevalence of Exclusive breastfeeding cessation and associated factors among
employed and unemployed mothers in Mizan Aman Town, Bench Sheko Zone Southwest Ethiopia.
Methods and Materials: -A community based comparative cross-sectional study was conducted from
April 2 to May 30; 2021using total sample of 453 randomly selected permanently employed and
unemployed mothers having children aged 6to 23 months in Mizan Aman Town, Bench Sheko Zone
South west Ethiopia were included in this study . The data was collected from randomly selected three
Kebeles using interviewer admistered questioaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to
present the data. Both bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify
factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding practice.Data were checked for completeness, entered
and analyzed by SPSS version 20. Binary logistic regression was done to identify factors associated with
exclusive breastfeeding cessation. The strength of association was measured using odds ratio with 95%
confidence intervals.
Result: The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding cessation was71.3% (AOR18.08, 95%CI.9.13-35.8)
of these 43% and 28.3% among employed and unemployed mothers respectively. The duration of work
per day employed mother who work Over-time 46 (22.7%) Full time140 (69.0%) Part-time7
(3.4%).162(79.8%) 22.7% were over time workers, frequent period of return to work from maternity
leave 122(60.1%), was between the third and fourth months after birth. Breastfeeding in the workplace
was 39 (19.2%) and no breastfeeding at the work place is154 (75.9%), 54(26.6%) having lactation break
and 139(68.5%) who had no reasonable lactation break during working time.
Conclusion: a significant difference among employed and unemployed. Therefore, most important to
support breastfeeding in the workplace would be lawful requirements. Prevalence of exclusive
breastfeeding cessation was much higher than the international and national expectation. The concerned
governmental bodies should consider improving the legislation of the 4 months postpartum maternity
leave to reduce employed mother's exclusive breastfeeding cessation.
