Influences of the type and time of breastfeeding in the onset of deforming oral habits

Introduction: deforming oral habits are closely related to the time of breastfeeding; there are beneficial or functional habits and the incorrect or deforming ones. Objective: to describe the influence of type and time of breastfeeding in the onset of deforming oral habits in children aged 2-4 years. Methods: across-sectional and retrospective descriptive study was carried out. The universe consisted of 1021 mothers with children aged 2-4 years and the sample was made up by 300 mothers with their respective children, selected by simple random sampling; age, sex, deforming oral habits, breastfeeding time, and breastfeeding type were obtained. Results: the group of 3 years (44.7 %) and the female sex (55.7 %), with the use of pacifiers and baby bottles (45.7 %), as deforming buccal habit in females, mixed lactation (65.3 %) in children with habits, breastfeeding for less than 3 months (40.8 %). Predominantly, the habit of pacifiers and baby bottles (45.7 %) at all breastfeeding time was observed to decrease as breastfeeding time increases (4.9 %). Conclusions: mixed breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding time of less than 3 months favor the practice of deforming oral habits. Keywords: breastfeeding; maternal breastfeeding; habits.