Research Article The Reasons for Early Weaning, Perceived Insufficient Breast Milk, and Maternal Dissatisfaction: Comparative Studies in Two Belgian Regions Emmanuelle Robert, 1 Yves Coppieters, 1 Béatrice Swennen, 2 and Michéle Dramaix 1 1 Research Center of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Clinical Research, School of Public Health, Universit´ e Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, 1070 Brussels, Belgium 2 Research Center of Health Policy and Systems-International Health, School of Public Health, Universit´ e Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, 1070 Brussels, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to Emmanuelle Robert; emrobert@ulb.ac.be Received 30 May 2014; Accepted 9 October 2014; Published 9 November 2014 Academic Editor: Li-Yin Chien Copyright © 2014 Emmanuelle Robert et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective and Method. To report on the weaning reasons at the maternity ward, at 3, 6, and 12 months and to report the socioeconomic characteristics of mothers not satisied with breastfeeding duration as well as of those who have weaned their child because of perceived insuicient milk (PIM). Two cross-sectional studies were performed in 2012. Results. 62.9% of mothers in Wallonia and 56.8% in Brussels are dissatisied with the duration of breastfeeding. In the two regions, younger mothers, ignoring the WHO recommendations, having a low level of education, or thinking not having suicient milk production, were more likely to be dissatisied. According to the analysed period, PIM and return to work are the two leading causes of weaning. While in Brussels PIM seemed to be associated only with partial BF at the maternity ward, in Wallonia, PIM was associated with a less educated environment and with ignoring the WHO recommendations. Conclusions. Too many mothers, especially destitute, are dissatisied. hey more oten evoke PIM as reason for weaning. However, the literature shows that the real lack of milk only afects 1–5% of the mothers. Professionals need to be better informed of this discrepancy between mothers’ perception and physiology. hey should be more supportive, especially among more precarious mothers. 1. Introduction he obvious beneits of breastfeeding (BF) for both the child and the mother are fully described [1]. In order that many children can beneit from these advantages, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends exclusive BF since 2001 for a period of 6 months and supplemented breastfeeding for at least two years [2]. Despite the fact that many countries have included these recommendations in the guidelines of various paediatric societies, very few mothers achieve these two objectives in many countries in Europe [3], in the United States [4, 5], or in other parts of the world [3, 6, 7]. Even if social-demographic predictors of both the initia- tion [8–10] and the duration of BF are widely described [9, 11– 13], very few studies consider at the same time (i) the mothers’ desired BF duration, (ii) the dissatisfaction generated by not achieving a certain BF duration, and (iii) the primary reason for weaning. It seems yet obvious that breastfeeding is a personal choice and the mothers’ desired duration cannot be ignored. hese elements could partially explain why the initiation rates and also the BF duration remain too low according to the WHO recommendations on which, however, the vast majority of scientists agree. he literature shows that the reasons for an “early” weaning, deined as not achieving the mother’s desired breastfeeding duration, depend on various factors including psychosocial (self-esteem, self-eicacy), cultural factors [6], but also the duration of the maternity leave [14, 15]. he perception of insuicient milk (PIM), that is, the mother’s Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Scholarly Research Notices Volume 2014, Article ID 678564, 11 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/678564