Abstract
BackgroundSurviving children born at 23 gestational weeks are a growing population. As many of these children face developmental challenges during childhood and adolescence, more knowledge is needed about the everyday life of this group. The parental perspective is important, as developmental problems often pose a challenge for the parents. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore mothers’ experiences of parenting children born at 23 gestational weeks and of the children’s everyday lives.MethodsThis was a qualitative descriptive study conducted with mothers of children born at 23 weeks of gestation. These purposively sampled eight mothers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews.ResultsSeven themes were formed on the basis of the interview data and they are presented in three dimensions: 1) the child seen from maternal perspective included themes ‘emphasizing strengths in the midst of challenges’, ‘relations with peers and siblings’, and ‘emotional well-being and active life’; 2) the parenting experience included themes ‘intensive mothering’ and ‘gratitude’; 3) the support included themes ‘support from the social network’ and ‘support from society’.ConclusionsThe mothers described how the lives of their children were active and rich. The mothers were dedicated to motherhood and they also expressed feelings of gratitude. Mothers received support from social networks and from society. This qualitative study provided an important complementary perspective to the discussion on extremely premature children’s quality of life. It also highlighted the importance of parental perspectives in assessing neonatal care and its outcomes.
Highlights
Surviving children born at 23 gestational weeks are a growing population
Preterm birth always includes considerable worry and stress for the parent, especially when the risk of death and developmental problems are very high, but these parental stress symptoms tend to diminish as the children grow [10,11,12]
We found seven themes in this qualitative study, in which eight mothers described their experiences of parenting and the quality of life of their children born at 23 weeks of gestation
Summary
Surviving children born at 23 gestational weeks are a growing population As many of these children face developmental challenges during childhood and adolescence, more knowledge is needed about the everyday life of this group. The parental perspective is important, as developmental problems often pose a challenge for the parents The aim of this qualitative study was to explore mothers’ experiences of parenting children born at 23 gestational weeks and of the children’s everyday lives. Preterm infants often have health and developmental consequences of being born preterm, and these increase the earlier the child is born [4,5,6,7] These health and developmental problems, together with social and environmental stress factors, may impact the quality of life of families with children born extremely preterm [8]. In qualitative studies about parenting children with disabilities in a larger context, it has been shown that parents tend to report positive aspects about parenting children with disabilities [17]
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