BACKGROUND: parturients assisted by a speech therapy care service. AIM: to characterize the parturient population assisted by the Speech Therapy Care Service, who were participating of the second phase of the Kangaroo Mother Method, in a school maternity, reference for high risk cases, in 2006. METHOD: retrospective analytical descriptive study by means of the analysis of 204 medical registers. Descriptive statistical techniques were used as well as the Mann-Whitney test for the comparison of variables without normal distribution. The adopted significance level was of 5%. RESULTS: the mean age of the mothers was of 24.61 years (SD = 7.36), being 125 (61.27%) from the countryside and 201 (50%) single. Most of the assisted population had been to school for 4 to 5 years (35.29%), most were housewives (76.47%) and had no previous experience concerning breastfeeding (53.43%). The prevalent birth method was Caesarean section (n=98; 48.03%) and 89 (43.62%) reported 1 to 3 sessions of pre-natal care counseling. CONCLUSION: the population assisted by the Speech Therapy Care Service was characterized mainly as single precipitous from the countryside, who had low income and no remunerated job, however they presented high schooling in terms of study years. Also a low number of pre-natal counseling sessions was observed, as well as caesarean section, low pregnancy age and extended hospital stay time.
Epidemiology; Breast Feeding; Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences; Infant Nutrition; Child Health Services
