Mother's milk (ASI) and the continuation of children's lives of people in Aceh special region

Abstract

Experts in health think that mother's milk (ASI = air susu ibu) is very good for the growth of baby since it has some positive substances, moreover the first ASI or namely colostrum is able to prevent various kinds of diseases and also it has the highest value of nutrition. This research has been undertaken in three districts of Aceh Special Region by means of sample respondents consisting of women population categorized in the productive age between 15-55 years old and with the status of being married or having been married. The system of collecting data utilizes interviews by means of questionnaires. In order to describe the feeding of ASI and its correlation with the number of live children, cross tabulation and correlation coefficient are used. The result shows that commonly women in Aceh especially in rural areas continue feeding ASI to their babies for a relatively long period of time between 1-2 years. However, the quality of ASI is still doubtful since the menu of food for breast-feeding mothers or pregnant mothers has no nutritious value, besides the way of breast- feeding itself has not fulfilled the health conditions. This research concludes that mothers in women community dominantly feed ASI to their babies, about 74 percent feed ASI during the time of two years, and most of them own three and more children.