Getting in touch. Helping parents and new-born babies to connect in the NICU

Abstract

ABSTRACT About 15 million premature babies are born every year; more than a million preterm babies die, while among those who survive many may have disabilities. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) becomes a meeting place between life and death. The preterm birth brings with it painful experiences which arouse feelings of guilt, fear of death and the need to mourn the idealised baby. The risk of serious consequences on the mother-child and father-child relationship and on the new-born's psychological and emotional development is a real danger which requires interventions. This paper uses illustrations from work with premature babies and their parents, to describe their dramatic experiences in NICU and the support work offered them, following a psychoanalytic observational model. In this model, active listening to the parents' experiences, as well as observing their baby with them, enables the workers to help the parents who have become parents much earlier than anticipated or wished-for. The workers listen, take in what they see and hear and hope slowly to transform the painful experiences of parents and baby. The work often begins with workers sand parents sharing observation of the new-born. The workers have all observed babies following the teaching of Esther Bick.