Practices and beliefs associated with early weaning from exclusive breastfeeding: integrative review

Abstract

Objective: To discuss practices and beliefs related to early weaning in exclusive breastfeeding. Methods: This is an integrative review carried out in the databases LILACS, SciELO, VHL and the CAPES/MEC journal portal, using the following descriptors: breastfeeding, early weaning, infant and exclusive breastfeeding. Results: The corpus of this investigation comprised 21 articles, published between 2014 and 2019. To systematically present the data analysis, the following categories were organized: Popular practices; Diverse aspects and, finally, Popular Beliefs. It was identified that practices and beliefs related to lactation have been part of everyday life for many centuries that end up leading to early weaning, such as: introduction of other types of food, misconceptions about breast milk, which is insufficient, or that the baby feel thirsty or did not want to accept. Final considerations: In this way, changes in the production of health care with regard to assistance to the pregnancy-puerperal cycle become relevant, which suggests the insertion of sociocultural determinants of the mother and the infant's family members in this health education process to exclusive breastfeeding.