Coping with a premature newborn birth: understanding the mothers’ feelings

Abstract

The study is to understand the existentiality of the premature newborn mothers that need assistance in a neonatal intensive care unit. For that, we used a qualitative approach based on the principles of the existential phenomenology. For this study, nine mothers were interviewed. They had newborns assisted in a neonatal intensive care unit from April to June, 2004, and the mother responded to the following question: What did you feel when your premature baby was born? From the attentive reading of the answers, three categories emerged: fear of facing their existentiality; agony for coping with the newborn living context; feelings of hope based on faith. This study made health professionals understand that listening and looking carefully is an essential instrument to understand premature newborn mothers and their peculiarities. Therefore, health professionals will be able to assist them authentically in a more humanized and effective way, strengthening the relationship between mother and infant