From the represented baby to the real one: The parents’ experience of childbirth

Childbirth is a special event for every woman: the way she experiences this particular moment may influence the mother's state of mind and the relationship with her partner and the newborn. A negative childbirth experience may result in emotional problems for the woman and consequently in a more difficult development of her "maternal identity" (Rubin, 1984; Fowles, 1994). Several authors suggest that a positive perception of their childbirth experience may help mothers to take better care of their children and to find their own well-being (Green, 1993; Schytt et al., 2007). In the last decades, studies regarding the emotional aspects of the childbirth experience have focused on fathers as well, especially on the deep emotions they experience at the birth of their first child (Venviläinen-Julkunen, Liukkonen, 1998). Our study, as part of a wider research concerning parenthood, explores the childbirth experience from both mothers' and fathers' perspective. For this purpose a specific instrument has been set up, the IEP (Interview about the Childbirth Experience; Candelori et al., 2005). It is a semi-structured interview, where parents are asked questions individually, between the 10th and the 15th day after childbirth. The focus is on three topics: the childbirth experience, the postpartum in the hospital, the returning home from the hospital. For each one of these topics two types of data were collected: descriptive information (type of delivery, length of the hospitalization, bottle or breast feeding,...) and information about emotions (reaction at the first encounter with the infant, moments of distress, closeness/distance of the partner...). IEP has been applied to 80 subjects: 40 mothers and 40 fathers at their first experience as parents. Collected data showed: how popular caesarean section is and what kind of effects it produces; the consequences, for mothers, of being close or distant to their child right after delivery; the relevant role of fathers in the childbirth experience; moreover several specific "at risk" cases were highlighted. According to other studies (Mayes, Leckman, 2007), useful comparisons have been realized between parents' memory of the childbirth experience and their mental representations explored during pregnancy and four months after childbirth.