Managing space and marking time: mothering severely ill infants in hospital isolation.

In this study, mothers retrospectively describe their experiences of prolonged protective isolation with infants hospitalized for severe combined immune deficiency. Mothers (N = 5) spent approximately 10 hours every day for 10.5 months in an 11-foot-square isolation room. Dressed in masks and surgical garb, they cared for their infants but were prohibited from engaging in skin contact. Although the rooms' characteristics and regulations remained fixed, mothers' sociospatial experiences varied dramatically over the course of the infants' treatment trajectories. The findings illustrate how place, space, and time affect women's well-being and their social and mothering relations in health care settings.