Integrated antenatal care services with breastfeeding counseling practices to improve pregnant women's knowledge, skills and readiness for exclusive breastfeeding

Abstract

Background: Stunting is the most common form of child malnutrition in millions of children in Indonesia, around 37% and one of the highest proportions of stunting is found in West Nusa Tenggara. Breastfeeding counseling during antenatal care (ANC) can encourage early breastfeeding. Still, counseling is not generally done even though the stage I and stage IV of normal labor, coverage exceeds the target and only one-fifth of the midwives provide complete and correct ANC services for the ten-step component service. The study aims to evaluate model of integrated antenatal care services with breastfeeding counseling practices to increase pregnant women's knowledge, skills and readiness to breastfeed Methods: Pregnant women from Kuripan Primary health care were selected randomly. This study compared two study groups, namely the intervention and control group of third-trimester pregnant women who were given integrated ANC and breastfeeding counseling compared to conventional ANC. Both groups were assessed for the knowledge, skills, and readiness of exclusive breastfeeding mothers before and after counseling. Chi-square test were used to compare readiness, knowledge, and breastfeeding practice before and after intervention in the study group. Results: The provision of integrated ANC and breastfeeding counseling in this study show a difference between knowledge before and after treatment with a p-value = 0.002 (p<0.05). There was a difference between the practice of breastfeeding before and after the treatment with p-value = 0.003 (p<0.05) and in the integrated antenatal care breastfeeding counseling treatment group it showed that there was a difference in readiness for exclusive breastfeeding before (p = 0.005) (p<0.05) and after being given treatment with p-value = 0.001 (p<0.05). Conclusions: Integrated antenatal care and breastfeeding counseling have shown differences in increased knowledge, exclusive breastfeeding practices and readiness for breastfeeding.