Lived experience of mothers with preterm infants

BACKGROUND: Mothers with premature neonates often encounter an uncontrollable level of stress. One of the strategies for self-control in these mothers is confronting with these conditions. The hope has essential role in confronting the stress in mothers having premature neonates. The purpose of this study is to explain lived experiences of mothers having premature neonates and design a scale for measuring it. METHODS: The study was performed by qualitative research approach. 12 participants were selected by purposive sampling method. Data were gathered by the semi-structured method in Besat General Hospital, Tehran, Iran and were analyzed using the content analysis approach. RESULTS: From qualitative data analysis, three essential terms including compatibility, suitability, self-esteem, and move-forward, and eagerness were resulted. In addition, the result of the qualitative section indicated that the mothers of premature neonates who participated in this study were adapted with the conditions and environment of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) ward. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that the hope scale of mothers with premature neonates was resulted by 39 interviews and 3 subscales. In general, in addition to determining some factors related to hope and confronting with stress due to having premature neonate, this study showed that the mothers pertained some kind of hope. In this study, lived experiences of hope of mothers having premature neonates have been demonstrated by three terms: 1- hope compatibility and suitability; 2- hope self-esteem and summit; 3- hope forward movement and eagerness.