Emotional Reactions of Mothers Facing Premature Births

Our intervention in the maternity and neonatal wards helped our sensibility to the immediate parental reaction to the premature birth. Among these reactions, what is called "stress" by the parents occurs most often and is at the origin of trauma. The investigators can cite the unexpected confrontation with a baby is far from corresponding to what the parents had anticipated; the stunned feeling while experiencing a chain of events rapidly taking place, an experience of emptiness when the baby is placed in the intensive care unit, the feeling of powerlessness when facing the real risk of the infant's death, the striking spectacle of invasive treatments, etc. The parents worry about the viability and future of their premature infant. Their parental impressions and more specifically those of the mother facing the premature birth could in and of themselves have repercussions on the development of the infant, by betting on a complex meeting and atypical interactions.

These observations have driven us to elaborate on a hypothesis that finds itself separate from the lesion model commonly applied to premature infants, and shifts the psychopathological approach to the post-traumatic reaction of the mother following the premature birth and repositions the question of behavioral disorders of the child in the interaction mother-infant field. The investigators think that the premature birth can bring about in a second phase and notably in the mother, post-traumatic symptoms as described in the post-traumatic stress state, and that this reaction could have effects on the mother-infant interactions. The investigators have carried out the current study to clarify the relationship between the mother's post-traumatic reaction triggered by the premature birth and the mother-infant interactions.