Emerging life: an essay about rhythms of encounters and missed encounters in the parent–infant early interactions. Issue 3 (1st September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lyon, Teresa
• Is Part Of: Infant observation. Volume 19:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 210
• Page End: 223
• Publication Date: 2016-09-01
• Subjects: psychosomatic -- maternal depression -- regurgitation -- undigested emotions -- intersubjectivity -- maternal trauma; Infant psychology -- Periodicals; Child development -- Periodicals; 155.422
• DOI: 10.1080/13698036.2016.1276470
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1369-8036

Abstract

Abstract : This paper uses an infant observation to illustrate the ways in which a mother and baby couple come together postnatally, and in particular through feeding. The moments of 'encounter' are linked with concepts such as the 'dance' between mother and baby, in which rhythm and mutual observation regulate the intensity and satisfactory feeling of contact. In this way baby and mother negotiate their developing relationship and their sense of well-being and trust. The state of mind of the mother is highly significant, and in the baby observation, it is clear at times that the mother's own anxiety, past trauma and the experience of severe postnatal depression impacted on her capacity to be close and receptive with her second child, who begins to regurgitate milk regularly. There is – a 'not coming together' a lot of the time and it seems this might have been inadvertently made worse by the fact that maternal grandmother had most of the care for the baby at the beginning. The baby when with his mother seems to take in a lot of his mother's unconscious, undigested feelings which are experienced as unsettling and he cannot keep in the given milk. The link between body and mind, soma and psyche is illustrated and discussed.