Background: Neonatal mortality in developing countries is one of the most important problems that need immediate attention in order to achieve Millennium Development Goals. Aims & Objective: To assess the knowledge and practices of pregnant women regarding good and harmful neonatal practices.

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In India, 56% births take place at home in the debilitating environment (Neonatal Mortality Rate 34.9%). 1 A good number of neonatal deaths occur at home due to poverty, poor living conditions, unawareness and substandard way of handling the delivery cases at home. Moreover, many women in slums work outside the home, resulting in insufficient care of them during pregnancy and ignoring of the newborn. 2,3 Despite a plethora of health institutions, over 50% births amongst the urban poor continue to occur in home settings and under the supervision of quacks. Customary ABSTRACT Background: Child birth is a physiological process which can become pathological due to the adoption of unhygienic condition of delivery practices and consequently affect the health and survival of the newborn. The objective of the study was to assess the behavior of pregnant women regarding delivery practices. To assess the relation of maternal education and delivery practices. Design of the Study was a community based cross sectional study. Methods: Field practice area of Rural Health Training Centre, Department of Community Medicine, RMC&H Bareilly. Participants were 110 pregnant women. Multistage random sampling method was used. Statistical analysis was SPSS version 21 used to analyse the data through implementing percentages. Results: Majority of pregnant women (70.9%) delivered at home. Among total home deliveries, 12 (15.4%) deliveries were conducted by trained dais. Dais washed their hands only in 33.3% of home deliveries. Clean surface was used in 16.70 % deliveries. The cord was cut with new blade in 29.5% of deliveries. Sterile cord tie was used in 14.1% deliveries. Nothing was applied on the cord of 15.4% deliveries. Delivery practices were found to be more satisfactory among those women who were educated at least upto high school standard and this difference was found to be highly significant statistically (<0.001) in all the strata of delivery practices. Conclusions: To conclude there is a low percentage of institutional deliveries and very poor delivery practices in rural area of Bareilly. Education definitely has a bearing on delivery practices thus it is need of an hour to educate the women so that they can actively participate in decision making in entire period of pregnancy and delivery.