Initially, mothers of preterm infants used a variety of coping and comforting strategies manage their traumatic stress. These strategies included discussing with other mothers with similar
experiences, seeking out information, spending more time with their infant to repair their relationship and/or to fight fears of death, or moving away from the hospital in order to start afresh. found that coping mechanisms used by mothers of preterm infants included adaptive/positive (emotion-focused and problem-focused) and maladaptive/negative (dysfunctional). found that majority of mothers with high PTS symptoms used emotion-oriented (44.4%) and problem-oriented (44.4%) and a few mothers used anxiety coping mechanism (11.1%). However, found higher baseline scores on dysfunctional and problem-focused coping in mothers with high PTS symptoms at 1 month follow-up than in mothers without PTS
symptoms at 1 month follow-up, while no significant difference in PTS symptoms were seen with emotional coping.