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On becoming a first-time mother after an emergency Caesarean section: a journey from alienation to symbolic adoption

Shirley Herishanu-Gilutz1, Golan Shahar, Emanuel Schattner

  • 1Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. giluty@bgu.ac.il

Journal of Health Psychology
|September 30, 2009
PubMed

This qualitative research focused on the significance of subjective experience of mothers who gave birth in an emergency Caesarean section. Ten first-time mothers experiencing emergency Caesarean section were interviewed, and their narrative accounts were analyzed using Giorgi's phenomenological method. Mothers described alienation from the infant on encountering her/him; primal difficulties in holding; a 'mechanistic' pattern of childcare at home; over-apprehension and fear of a cradle-death. A few of the women seemed to cope with these experiences by performing 'a symbolic adoption' of their infants. In the context of object-relations theory, the findings, will potentially inform psychological care in obstetrics and gynaecology.

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