Hypotheis 1: There is no significant relationship between respondents’ level of education with feeding and weaning practices.

The study design was descriptive and cross sectional. Purposive sampling technique was used to select two Primary Health Care centres in Ado-Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Nigeria. To maintain anonymity, the PHC were referred to as ‘PHC A’ and ‘PHC B’.

The ‘PHC A’ is made up of a waiting room, examination room, labour ward and an admission ward. The services rendered in the Centre include antenatal services, delivery, circumcision, family planning, treatment of childhood diseases and immunization services. It is operated by four registered nurses and fifteen community health extension workers (CHEWS) with an average patient patronage of 744 per month.

The settings for ‘PHC B’ was similar to PHC A with five registered nurses and fifteen CHEWS. Services rendered in the clinic include, family planning, antenatal clinic, delivery, circumcision, treatment of childhood diseases, infant growth monitoring and immunization services. It has an average monthly patient patronage of 132.

Study population, sampling technique and sample size. The target population for this study comprised of women in the selected PHC centres whose confinement was not more than five years to avoid recall bias. Inclusion criteria included attending one of the selected PHC centres, have children below the age of five years who are being fed (bottle feeding or breastfeeding) or weaned. Potential participants had to be willing to participate in the study.

Purposive sampling technique was used to select 238 mothers that participated in the study while only 200 mothers returned fully completed questionnaire. The sample size was calculated, using the Fischer’s formula for descriptive study. Although the calculated sample size of 217 and obtained, deliberate over-sampling was done to the tune of 10% (21.7) to make up for incomplete responses. Therefore, a sample size of 238 was used but only 200 questionnaires were fully completed.

A semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The research instrument was developed by checking previous articles done on weaning and feeding practices and deducing questions from most of them. The questionnaire was divided into four sections, sections A and B contained the demographic data and the feeding practices applied by the participants, respectively. Section C assessed the weaning practices and foods used in weaning off the children, while Section D assessed the knowledge of mothers on feeding and weaning. The questionnaire was written in English language and participants were informed about the purpose of the study. Furthermore, pre-testing of the questionnaire was carried out using five participants that had similar characteristics with the study population but the findings were not included in the final data.

Mothers of children below the age of five were asked to participate in the study during their visit to the health care centres for ante-natal and post-natal services (booking, immunization) or family planning. Data was collected from March to April 2017. Guidelines for completion of the questionnaire was explained to the participants, questionnaires were collected and collated.

Before the commencement of the study, the research proposal was submitted to the Research and Ethics Committee of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) for reviewed and permission to conduct the study was given. Likewise, an official letter was written to the two selected PHC centres and permission letters were obtained from the facility managers. Prior to data collection, each participant’s right was explained and inform consent were obtained. The participants were assured that information provided will not be used against them, no remuneration was offered and they were informed of the opportunity to withdraw at any stage of the research.

Data analysis was done with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 and Microsoft Office Excel (2016) to generate figures and graphs. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean were presented on tables, or charts.

With respect to the socio-demographic characteristics of participants, of the 200 participants, 50.5% of them were between the ages of 31 – 40. A total of 70.5% of the mothers were married. The vast majority (48.0%) of the mothers have 2 children, with only 1.0% of them having six children. Over 40% of the mothers had at least secondary school education (Table 1).

As shown in Table 2, more than half of the respondents (59.5%) fed their infants at least 6 times a day, 88.0% of the mothers breastfed their children and 63.0% did not give their children anything to drink other than breast milk in the first 3 days after delivery. Of the 37.0% of mothers who gave their infants anything other than breast milk in the first 3 days after delivery, more than half (54.1%) gave their baby glucose water.

Most mothers (60.0%) gave their children only breast milk and the minority. Almost half (42.0%) of the mothers fed their children with only breast milk till when they were 5 – 6 months, and 61.0% of the children were satisfied with only breast milk in the first 6 months.

Majority (60.5%) of the mothers breastfed for about 6 months, also vast majority (81.0%) of the mothers practice night feeding and close to one- third (38.9%) of the night feeding was on demand.

As revealed in the study, more than one- third (39.5%) of mothers weaned their child within the age range of 6 – 7 months which is also the same age most of the mothers stopped breastfeeding their children. Close to half (44.0%) of the participants weaned their children because they had reached the weaning age, while 44.0% weaned their child off breast milk abruptly. Pap and milk (64.0%) were the food used the most by mothers during the period of weaning (Table 3).

The use of bitter substance (39.0%) was used by mothers the most as a method to take their child off breastmilk. More than half (57.5%) of the mothers gave their weaning food with a spoon and cup. A high percentage (70.0%) of the children was not selective of weaning food, 71.0% of the mothers responded that the weaning method affected the baby’s weight. Majority (88.5%) of the mothers did not take drugs when they were pregnant (Table 3).

As shown in Table 4, about half (51%) of the mothers obtained their knowledge on feeding and weaning of their infants from health care workers and 82% of the mothers were familiar with the right meaning of exclusive breastfeeding (Table 4).

Almost half (51%) of the participants indicated that their knowledge on breast feeding was shown to have come from health workers (Figure 2). Generally, a vast majority (70%) of the participants were observed to have ideal knowledge of breastfeeding and weaning (Figure 3).

The majority of mothers in the study breastfed their children for at least six times daily, and breastfeeding was given for about six months in total.

This study agreed with the findings of Akeredolu et al. (2014) and Olatona, Odozi and Amu (2014), who asserted in their studies that majority of the mother’s breastfed their children. In a related study, Katepa-Bwalya et al. (2015), it was also observed that majority of mothers breastfed their children for varying periods of time. As revealed in the study, of the majority that practiced breastfeeding, only few (14.7%) breastfed exclusively. This is similar to the findings of Mohammed (2014) and Katepa-Bwalya et al. (2015), where only 30.1% and 6.8% of mothers practiced exclusive breastfeeding respectively. Despite the fact that breast feeding is known to be a highly recommended and beneficial way to feed infants as it provides psychological and health benefit to both the mother and the child. Globally there has been a common decline in the practice of breastfeeding both in terms of occurrence and interval in the past few decades (Berra, 2013).

The study further revealed that about 40.0% of the mothers in addition to breastfeeding included complementary foods for their children at 4 – 6 months of age. This contrast with the results obtained from some studies conducted in South-West, South-South and North- West regions of Nigeria where 76.7%, 79.9% and 80.1% respectively introduced complementary feeding before the expected 6 months of age (Akeredolu et al., 2014; Osie- Efetie, Oyibo and Okperi, 2011; Matthew et al., 2009).

When breast milk is no longer adequate to meet the nutritional needs of the infant, complementary foods should be added to the diet of the child (Kavitha, Nadhiya and Parimalavalli, 2014). Proper breastfeeding practices are effective ways for reducing childhood morbidity and mortality. While many mothers understand the significance of breastfeeding, others are less informed on the benefits of breastfeeding and weaning. Anoshirike et al. (2014) stated that, malnutrition in Nigerian infants is found to be as a result of inappropriate child feeding practices such as late introduction of complementary foods, small energy and nutrient density of foods offered, feeding in little quantity at meals, food limitations due to cultural beliefs, low birth-weight and high morbidity.