Laurin Wilson, Utah State University
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Premature birth and subsequent hospitalization of an infant in the Newborn (or Neonatal) Intensive Care Unit (NICU) can be an extremely stressful time for parents and has been associated with maternal depression, anxiety, and decreased coping ability (Hack, Taylor, Klein, & Mercuri-Minich, 2000; Hughes, McCollum, & Sheftel, 1994; Partridge et al., 2005; Shaw, Sweester, St. John, Lilo, Corcoran, Jo, & Horwitz, 2013). Interventions to reduce parents’ stress levels during the hospitalization of their very preterm infants have mixed results (Boyce, et al., 2008; Matricardi, S., Agostino, R., Fedeli, C., & Montirosso, R., 2013). This study examined the medical, family, and maternal mental health factors that influenced feelings of parental distress for mother of very premature infants.
Data was collected one month after the infants were discharged from the hospital and included measures of family well-being, maternal depression, maternal parenting stress, and basic demographics. Fifty mother-child dyads were included in the study. The average gestational age of the infants was 27.51 weeks. The average birth weight was 981 grams, and the average amount of time that the infants were hospitalized was 84.32 days.
Results indicate that the gestational age of the infant, maternal depression, and mothers’ perception of a lack of connectedness as a family all significantly contribute to mothers’ feelings of parental distress in our regression model accounting for 41% of the variance. Interestingly, the beta coefficient for gestational age predicting parental distress was positive indicating that mothers who carried their infants closer to full-term reported more parental distress than those who delivered the infants much earlier.
These findings suggest that mothers and families could benefit from intervention to improve family connectedness, parenting stress, and maternal depression. Implications for practitioners, possible interventions, and future research will be discussed.