Mothers' strategies to meet their needs in the newborn intensive care nursery.

In this prospective, critical ethnographic study using a total of 448 hours of participant observations incorporating in-depth interviews, the author explored with 12 mothers of premature babies their descriptions and interpretations of their own needs in a tertiary-level newborn nursery (NICU) and their actions to address these needs. In the NICU the mothers demonstrated a repertoire of actions to vigilantly "watch over" their premature babies, which they extended to address their own needs as well. The mothers employed these actions in such a way as to minimize the potential for diverting resources from their babies and to minimize conflict with caregivers.