Birth parameters and parental factors influence on breastfeeding incidence in Polish population across three decades

Background: The purpose of the study was to select factors which importantly influencing the decision of breastfeeding in the first period of life over twenty years in the three cohorts in central Poland. Materials and methods: The analysis included 2159 children (1017 girls and 1142 boys). The data come from three cohorts investigated in the following years: 1993-1997, 2004-2008 and 2015-2017. In each cohort, parents completed questionnaires on the type of nutrition in the first months of life (breastfeeding versus formula feeding), child-birth parameters, duration of pregnancy, age and education of parents, and maternal smoking during pregnancy. Information about birth parameters, i.e., birth weight, birth length, birth head and chest circumference, gestational age (week of pregnancy) and Apgar score were taken from children's medical records. The Chi² test, U-Mann Whitney test and logistic regression were performed to check which factors significantly affected mother decision of breastfeeding. Results: We observed differences between factors which favor breastfeeding among three investigated cohorts. The factors significantly associated with breastfeeding only in cohort 1993-1997 were: birth parameters (higher birth length, higher body mass and higher chest circumference) and lower prevalence of exposition to cigarettes smoke during pregnancy. However, independently on tested cohort the logistic regression model indicated that the following factors correlated with the lack of breastfeeding: lower gestational age (E = -0.1663, p = 0.0182), higher maternal age (E = 0.1326, p < 0.0001), lower paternal age (E = -0.0526, p = 0.0345), secondary paternal education (E = 0.5138, p = 0.0024) vs. higher, lower maternal education (E = 0.7577, p = 0.0003) vs. higher, other season of birth than summer (E = -0.3650, p = 0.0439). Conclusions: Factors influencing the mother's decision to breastfeed independently on tested cohort were as a following: parental education and parental age, season of birth and duration of pregnancy.