Traditional practices about child care of the mothers who owner 0-12 month baby

Our study, which was in descriptive nature, aimed to determine the traditional practices of mothers who had children between 0-12 months for the child care. The study included 382 mothers who participated as volunteers. Those mothers were the women who admitted to Afyon Kocatepe University Ahmet Necdet Sezer Research and Practice Hospital in Afyonkarahisar between July 15, 2010 and December 15, 2010 and the study was performed by face to face interview. Collected data were shown in number and percentage values and for the statistical relations, Chi-square test was used.According to the results which were gathered from the research, it has been determined that; if they have any health problem 15,2 % of women, they primarily try to solve any health problem through traditional practices they know; 91,4 % consider important to some traditional practices in different levels. It was determined that 40,3 % of the mothers fed their babies after half an hour from the birth, 59,7 % of them fed their babies one-two hours after the birth. It was found out that 55,8 % of the mothers gave breast milk as the first food for their children. It was found that 61,3 % of the mothers gave the first bath for babies when the umbilical cord had been been removed, and 70,9 % of the mothers wrapped their babies in swaddling clothes. For mount care 57,6 % of the mothers are using clear carbonate water. Forty one percent of the mothers kept the umbilical cord after the removal and 50,3 % of them had prayed in order to keep their babies from the evil?s eye. Various traditional approaches are stil used by mothers in order to prevent bad smell of babies or to prevent neonatal jaundice and also to prevent puerperal fever. It was determined that 96,3 % of mothers had the call to prayer recited into the baby?s ear at birth, that 23,6% cut their babies ` nails as they grew, 51,8% of mothers used nappy cream to heal the rash, administered cough syrup in the event of coughing (44,8 %).In conclusion, mothers are using traditional approaches for baby care. Therefore health care providers must be aware of traditional approaches commonly used by mothers for baby care, besides giving modern medical care. Mothers should be educated by health care providers for the prevention of using harmful traditional approaches for baby care.Key Words: Mother, baby, infant care, traditional, practices.