Becoming a mother and preterm birth: Considerations about the constitution of motherhood in the context of very low birth weight

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the process of establishing the mothers’ relationship with their premature infants, especially those born with low birth weight. Interest in the subject originated in the authors’ clinical experience, both in the hospital in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, as in psychotherapy with children at preschool age who were born preterm and with low birth weight. For this discussion, it will be discussed a brief theoretical course on the process of becoming a mother, the potentially traumatic birth factor, especially preterm and the importance of a transitive movement that the mother puts in the relationship with the baby in an attempt to take the constitutive movement of it as a subject. This movement is illustrated by a case reported from the experience of care for mothers and babies admitted to NICU.

Key words: prematurity, mother-infant relationship, transitivism.