The sick neonate as centre of parents/health staff relationship.

Abstract

In this research we analyze which psychical reaction a neonate's hospitalization can have on parents, the evolution of their feelings, which functions doctors and nurses fulfil towards the baby and his/her parents. Disappointment and psychical suffering make to the mother difficult to put the attachment's process to the child into practice. A refusal reaction generally follows the shock and responsibilities are frequently projected on an external object, for instance the gynaecologist, rather than to search the guilt into herself. The mother can evade treatments, because she considers herself not able to take care of him/her. The father usually lets his baby to become a member of the family, he is the first one who becomes fond of the child. Mothers become estranged from the neonate to avoid becoming fond of him/her: they are afraid he/she dies and they keep an emotional distance to shelter themselves from pain. The doctor is invested by parents and nurses with full powers and aggressiveness when things go wrong. It is helpful to the mother to externalize the blame on him/her, but he/she protects himself/herself from being involved, because his/her function is to attend physical health and to remedy child's damages. Treatment of parent's suffering does not concern the doctor or the nurse. It is necessary a different professional figure to recover and reconstruct the relationship between child and parents. The nurse attends children applying their efforts for him/her. Each mother chooses a nurse with whom she identifies herself. In the most serious pathologies the mother identifies herself with a professional nurse: when a mother expresses sentiments of jealousy towards nurses we can be satisfied with the work done.