Breast-feeding situation among working women, graduate and post-graduate students at a university - DOI: 10.4025/actascihealthsci.v25i2.2237

Abstract

Working women live with the need for maintaining breast-feeding, so do students at different graduation levels. Thus we seek to identify the motherly breast-feeding conditions of employees, professors and students from a university in São Paulo, when returning to their professional and academic activities, as well as to identify the hindering or facilitating elements concerning maintenance of lactation within the working or school ambiences. We interviewed 51 (100%) women among whom 49% had already introduced some kind of human-milk substitute in child’s diet upon resuming their activity, and 15.7% had already weaned the child. Exclusive lactation was practiced by 25% of these women and 5.8% children had predominant lactation. Lack of support in the institutions and surrounding conditions for milking, as well as a lack of nurseries to maintain proximity with the child were the main difficulties pointed out by the women for the maintenance of lactation.