Maternal Stress Response Among Mothers of Premature Neonates

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to assess maternal stress of mothers having premature neonates, and determining factors that might affect their stress. The current study conducted on 200 mothers with their premature neonates, were selected form Neonatal care units at Banha hospitals. The approaches for data collection were two tools; the first interview sheet included the following items: - Demographic data of mothers.

- History of previous prematurity.

- Prenatal and natal complaints.

- Type of complaint.

- Birth order of the child.

- Gestational age.

- Weight of the child. The second sheet is a five degrees of a parenting stress scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Parenting stress scale was developed by Berry & Jone (1995). This scale has been translated into arabic and modified. This scale is intended to assess mothers stress.

The main results of the current study were summarized as the following: The mean age of mothers was (25.45 ± 4.27). Regarding level of education, (21.5 %) were illiterate. Most of them were housewives (77 %). Regarding to the monthly income most of mothers (76.5%) have monthly income between 75-300 LE. The results revealed that the