The second high-risk birth: impact on maternal dyadic adjustment.

The birth of a high‐risk infant is believed by many clinicians to result in the disruption of the dyadic relationship of the parents. A comparative, descriptive, cross‐sectional study was conducted to ascertain the relationship between dyadic adjustment, as a measure of the dyadic relationship, and parity of high‐risk mothers. A convenience sample of 26 mothers who had infants admitted to a regional neonatal intensive‐care unit was chosen, and mothers were assigned to three groups depending on the severity of the infant's illness. Each mother, at the time her infant was clinically stable, completed a Demographic Data Tool designed by the researcher and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale designed and utilized by Spanier (1976). Descriptive statistics and the Pearson Product Moment Correlation were utilized. A significant negative correlation (r = ‐.45, p < .05) was found between the total dyadic adjustment score of mothers who had infants with severe respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and the number of previous ...