By LAURIE TARKAN


Kim Roscoe’s son, Jaxon, was born three months early, weighing a little more than a kilogram. But for nine days he did exceedingly well in the neonatal intensive care unit, and Ms. Roscoe felt little different from the other new mothers.

Her nightmare started on Day 10.

“I had left him late the night before, in my arms, tiny but perfect,” said Ms. Roscoe, 30, of Monterey, California. But when she returned the next day, Jaxon was in respiratory and kidney failure, and his body had swollen beyond recognition. “He was hooked up to ventilators, his skin was turning black, the alarms kept dinging over and over,” Ms. Roscoe recalled.

Jaxon is 16 months old now, and home with his family. But he was in intensive care for 186 days, and his days and weeks were punctuated by near-death episodes.

During the ordeal, Ms. Roscoe had constant nightmares. She slept with her shoes on, expecting a call from the hospital at any moment. She became angry at the world, and so anxious she thought a supermarket scanner was one of Jaxon’s monitors going off. Her husband, Scott, took care of their daughter, Logan, now 6, and held things together emotionally.

About three months after her son’s birth, Ms. Roscoe asked to see a psychiatrist. She was given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. - a mental illness more often associated with surviving war, car accidents and assaults, but now being recognized in parents of premature infants in prolonged intensive care.

A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine in California, published in the journal Psychosomatics, followed 18 such parents. After four months, three had diagnoses of P.T.S.D. and seven were considered at high risk for the disorder.

Experts say parents of neonatal intensive care infants experience multiple traumas, beginning with the early delivery.

“The second trauma is seeing their own infant having traumatic medical procedures and life-threatening events, and also witnessing other infants going through similar experiences,” said the author of the Stanford study, Dr. Richard J. Shaw, an associate professor of child psychiatry at Stanford and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. “And third,” he continued, “they often are given serial bad news. The bad news keeps coming. ”

Experts say parents who are at risk for post-traumatic stress should be identified ahead of time and given help to prepare them for the initial trauma. But many hospitals are focused on saving the infants, not the emotional crises of the parents.

Liza Cooper heads the March of Dimes NICU Family Support program, which offers psychological support to parents in 74 hospitals around the United States. “The most critical piece is to help prepare someone so they know what to expect and don’t fall into a world of frightening unknowns,” she said.


Parents of premature infants often suffer stress disorders.