Abstract
Objective: To investigate the knowledge of nursing mothers attended at the Basic Health Units of a city in the backwoods Paraibano about exclusive breastfeeding, focusing on the benefits for mother and child. Methods: It was characterized by a basic nature with field procedures, where the population was composed of 30 nursing mothers, who attend the Basic Health Units and a sample composed of 100% of the population, obeying the inclusion and exclusion criteria described in the methodology. The sample was characterized by nurses who did the prenatal care in the units studied, where they were approached with a semi-structured questionnaire to collect data. Results: Due to the data collection, it was possible to observe that all of them underwent prenatal follow-up in the first months of gestation, and the majority performed more than six visits as recommended by the OMS. Of the nursing mothers studied, the number of breastfeeding mothers prevailed in some way, but only half of them used exclusive breastfeeding. Conclusion: It is noticed that there is still a need to promote exclusive breastfeeding, because despite existing policies, it is still not true for many mothers in the current context.