February 09, 2024 Bibliography Club
hosted by Dr André Aboulkheir
Guest : Dr Claude Danan (Pediatric Neonatologist, CHI Créteil)
Prematurity and its impact on the mother-child relationship
In our Integrative Psychosomatic clinical practice, during the investigation stage we usually ask patients about what they know or might know about their early childhood, and also about their mother's pregnancy.
what they know, or might know, about their early childhood and their mother's pregnancy. As Professor JB Stora points out on page 26 of his book - Integrative Psychosomatics, a new approach to mind-body relations - "it is important with our patients to always think about maternal stress during pregnancy, and to know what life events disrupted fetal development".
An example of this is the extreme case where the pregnancy does not go to its full nine-month term, giving birth to a premature newborn. There are many causes of prematurity, but the psychological contribution to this gestational pathology is generally not sufficiently taken into account, such as family and environmental stress during pregnancy...
There are three stages of prematurity:
-average prematurity between 32 and 37 weeks,
-Extreme prematurity between 28 and 32 weeks,
-very premature at less than 28 weeks!
A four-minute film, very impressive and moving, will bring us into the reality of extreme prematurity, and show us in a certain way, even though certain vital functions are not at all mature after this birth, how important the life of relationships is and can kick-start the development of the psychic apparatus. In the intensive care unit for very premature babies at the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Créteil (where this film was shot), the medical team has clearly understood and taken into account the importance of the mother-child relationship right from birth. Unlike other intensive care units, where the mother can only see her child between 2 and 6 p.m. "visiting hours", here she is permanently present with her baby, her room being next to the premature baby's intensive care bed.
An introductory text by Dr. Claude Danan, former head of department at this intensive care unit, and a few related articles show us the importance attached to this principle, a principle to which we are very attached in Integrative Psychosomatics.
