Prematurity – Narratives from the experiences of families with premature babies, those who work with premature babies, and premature babies who are now adults.
Since 2008, 17th November has been introduced in our calendar as World Prematurity Day to raise awareness on preterm birth and its implication for babies and their families.
As a professional in maternal, paternal and parental mental health, from my therapy chair I often hear stories about birth. At times these stories are shared in anticipation of the experience of birth. I hear about expectations, plans, phantasies. I interpret these stories as an appropriate tool to adjust to the birth experience, a tool to get in touch with our needs and express them to ourself first and others as well. I understand that these stories can be supportive if we experience anxiety or fear as well as excitement and a sense of overwhelming awe as they reconnect us with the reality of the experience. At times the stories are narrated afterwards, once the birth has happened already. We might have been the subject of this birth, that baby that came to the world; the agent of this, the birthing person who went through the physiological adjustment of the birth experience; or a witness to it such a partner, a family member or a professional involved in it. At times, the stories I hear afterwards are narrated with duality. We tend of highlight and separate those aspects that were ok and those that did not. We evaluate the afterwards through these stories and what we have retained of this experience.
Premature birth changes the game of these stories, both those that are anticipated and those that are narrated afterwards. There is uncertainty that challenges our phantasy of reality and safety; a sense of emergency that invites quick decision making for the parent(s); a need to act fast for medical professionals in order to assess the situation and a similar needs for parents or siblings and other family members to accept the change in the family and life dynamics before it had been planned; there is not much in terms of things that went ok and those that did not because we look at survival, a possibility – at times frail – to live and the danger to die.
What is there for parents who need to accelerate their journey of parenthood without a choice or even more when this acceleration comes with risk and danger? What happens to us when our emotional journey is forced to adapt to this physiological experience that cannot be postponed even if we are trained to plan our pregnancy around a due date that we hold on to and believe to represent the cutting edge between the before and after birth? How about those parents who encounter loss as a consequence of a premature birth? What happens to the babies when they are born prematurely and enter in this world earlier than expected? What happens to their personality development, their decisions about life and death, their sense of physical and emotional safety? What about the physical and relational impacts for these babies who need hospitalization and specific – often complicated – medical procedures to be supported in their beginnings of life? What about the siblings that witness their parents going through changes and holding uncertainty about this little – at times very little – human being who is out in the world but who cannot come home as yet? And the medical professionals that are trained to act quickly, under stress and take decisions? What about these professional hands trained in washing, cuddling, feeding these petit bodies with care and attention and at times with fear of this fragility? What happens to us when things don’t go as expected; when we lose our stories; when we acquire a birth story although this is not the birth story we wanted to have and narrate?
On this day, I honor those stories I have heard in the therapy room thanks to the generosity and trust of those people I work with and from colleagues who share with me their own personal and professional experiences. I hope we can honor these stories with the awareness that the consequences of such stories are impactful for our wellbeing, relationships and sense of safety in this world. They space from post traumatic symptoms, anxiety, obsessions, sense of unsettlement, difficulty in attachment and relationship, guilt, worry, grief etc. If you are impacted by preterm birth as a mother, father, carer, sibling, baby who was born prematurely, and/or as medical professional, this day honors your story. If you have not told or connected to the impact that your story has had on you or on those around you, a therapeutic relationship can create this containment for you.
Baby Loss – Experiences that shape our life and relationships
Between the 9th and 15th October 2023, the charity Baby Loss Awareness Week invites us to pause on baby loss.
I invite myself and those reading these short paragraphs to engage with this invitation.
(Please, take care of yourself and assess if you are in condition to connect with loss. I would invite you abstain from this if you have had a recent loss and you are grieving for this)
Baby loss.
Listen to the sound of this: baby loss.
Pause.
Baby loss.
Look at the images that come to your mind.
There may people you know, even yourself, places you have been to or visited. It may be that you think of specific words or a language, or a jargon, a label, a condition – physical or mental. You may visualize colours, or shapes, or work of arts.
Whatever comes to your mind, images, sounds, smells… give it space.
Breath.
You are giving space to loss. I invite you to honour what is in this space. Hold it and honour it.
Count. 1, and breath. 2, and breath, 3 and breath.
With the last breathe, we depart from the loss we have connected with.
In these moments of connection with baby loss, each one of us has met ‘something’, the meaning of which is personal and unique. We have paused on that space in which our experience interconnects with baby loss and we have honoured this space.
In my experience of reflection, there are two aspects that I meet often when I pause to engage with baby loss.
First, I am touched by the experience that baby loss is not one, but it is many, or even more. Baby loss is as many as the experiences I have heard from the people I have met along the way of loss. There is no one way to experience loss.
Some people have lost their baby at the begging of pregnancy. Others have lost the opportunity and hope to be parent earlier than conception. Some people have accompanied their baby far along the way of development in the uterus and lost them towards the end of pregnancy. Mothers have given birth to stillborn babies and other have seen their babies’ heart stop minutes, days, weeks or months after birth. Some parents have accompanied family friends in these journeys of loss. We may have supported colleagues who grieved for these losses.
Second, in my personal and professional journey, I have encountered the experience that years pass and loss remains. Maybe loss is not present with the same intensity at all times, but it comes often in our life. When we look at the couch where we sat contemplating parenthood with our partner. When we eat a salty chicken soup as we did during the first week of pregnancy. When we drive past the doctor that delivered us the news of the lack of heart bit. When we go out with friends whose kids are the same age of ours, if they were to be alive. These and many more are the narratives of loss I hear in the therapy and these are the narratives that stay. They remain in our life even if we move to another country, we change job, we have children, etc. This is the glimpse of loss in our experience of life.
During this week of awareness on baby loss, I invite myself to honour these narratives and the many shapes that loss has for each one of us. For those of us who work in the perinatal field, this week is an invitation to acknowledge the preciousness of these narratives and hold them with respect. For those of us who connect with loss personally or through friends or family member, this week is an opportunity to make space for the unique value of this experience, to reflect on the meaning of loss in our life and observe how loss has impacted / impacts our relationship with ourselves and others.
I believe in the healing power of loss if we stay open to explore and reflect. Therefore, I hope that loss can be or become an experience to connect and grow.