Experiences, mental well‐being and community‐based care needs of fathers of late preterm infants: A mixed‐methods pilot study

Abstract

AimsWe explore fathers' experience of caring for a late preterm infant including their stressors, needs and corresponding interventions proffered by public health nurses.DesignPilot mixed‐methods exploratory sequential design.MethodsWe collected (a) qualitative data from semi‐structured interviews (N = 5) and (b) quantitative data (N = 31) about fathers' levels of stress (Parenting Stress Index), anxiety (Speilberger State–Trait Anxiety) and depression (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) at 6–8 weeks after birth of their infant.ResultsFathers appreciated their infant was born ‘early’, however, discovered through experience the demands of their infant, which appeared as stress (child and parent domains) and anxiety. Themes: hypervigilance in care explained the fathers' sense of competency and role restriction; infant fatigue and parental feeding elucidated the stressful aspect of father–infant interaction. Unscientific advice from healthcare providers was confusing and frustrating while uncertainty of rehospitalization caused worries, fears or stress. One father experienced depressive symptoms.

How parents and health professionals experience prematurity in an Italian neonatal intensive care: A grounded theory study

“…While the breakup phase can be tracked in the literature (Howe, Sheu, Wang, & Hsu, 2014;Labrie et al, 2021;Lasiuk et al, 2013;Rieves et al, 2016), this study adds the HPs feedback and role, which could also inform the underlying motivations of communicative dynamics reported by Labrie and colleagues (Labrie et al, 2021). Parents need to search for positivity about what is happening in this first phase, confirming their fragility, which has already emerged in other studies (Edwards et al, 2020;Labrie et al, 2021;Mӧrelius et al, 2021;Premji et al, 2020). Couples felt alone in this situation, which is confirmed by previous studies (Kusters, van der Pal, van Steenbrugge, den Ouden, & Kollée, 2013;Lakshmanan et al, 2017).…”

“…In these regards, it is crucial to consider the parental system (whether composed of motherfather dyads or single mothers/fathers) since most of the studies involved just the mothers' point of view (Turner, Chur-Hansen, & Winefield, 2015;Welch et al, 2016). Only recently, publications started including fathers (Edwards et al, 2020;Mӧrelius, Brogren, Andersson, & Alehagen, 2021;Premji et al, 2020). Such considerations, however, provide only a partial perspective on the overall psycho-social process around premature births, which also involves other actors, such as healthcare professionals (HPs) operating around a premature child.…”

Experience of family members in the care of preterm newborns discharged from a neonatal intensive care unit

“…A participação do pai nos cuidados demonstra não somente um suporte à experiência das mães, mas também o envolvimento deles nos cuidados aos seus filhos. O pai também possui sua carga de expectativas e estresse pelo excesso de cuidado que o filho pré-termo pode exigir, eles também se tornam vigilantes e passam pelo estresse na interação com o filho, podendo apresentar sintomas de depressão (17) .…”