We will continue today with our interview with the psychologist Meritxell Sánchez, in which we will address more specific questions about the emotional health of the mother and the baby linked to practical and concrete aspects that it is convenient to know to promote a better Primal Health.
What circumstances favor good Primal Health?
As numerous studies show, an optimal birth experience (for both the mother and the baby) can have a long-term influence on the integral health of both. The connection between birth experiences and long-term health is investigated by Primal Health (Michel Odent's Primal Health database).
Also, numerous studies also show how the mother's stress during pregnancy can influence the health and development of the baby.
To what extent can pregnancy influence the emotional health of the child?
Despite the role that genetics play in the baby's development during pregnancy, it is sufficiently proven that environmental factors regulate the process. Neuroscience has confirmed to us how cortisol, one of the stress hormones, negatively influences the development of the baby's brain, impairing its ability to cope with stress in the future. The first cares are those that really shape the nervous system and determine how it will be interpreted and respond to stress in future stages.
And the birth?
During the delivery, at the cerebral level there is a specific neurobiological and hormonal scenario prepared for the imprint and the beginning of the bond with the baby, which makes the events during childbirth and the first hours of the puerperium can remain vividly engraved in conscious memory, whether they are pleasant or traumatic. Thus, the hours following birth are important since there is a delicate and complex hormonal and neurobiological balance. All these hormones play a crucial role in the beginning of the link between the mother and the baby.
Does having a happy childbirth and puerperium help the mother bond better with her baby?
This hormonal balance favors a satisfactory experience of childbirth and the puerperium in women, favoring emotional states of well-being in the mother, living a healthy puerperium, helping to build a safe bond with her baby. This sensitive period will influence how the bond will develop, breastfeeding, the puerperium ... and may have long-term consequences. The puerperium and bond will be influenced depending on how the first contact is and if it has interfered (and to what degree) in pregnancy and childbirth and in that first contact.
Although the first contact is not decisive, it will lay the foundations of the link.
If there have been difficulties, you can work on them and resolve them, heal emotional wounds and repair the bond to build and strengthen a secure attachment.
Therefore, is the work of accompaniment to the mother really important?
The importance of making a good accompaniment in the perinatal area, especially in difficult situations, will facilitate not only the establishment of a good bond between the mother and the baby, but also contributes to the foundation of a psychic structure. healthy. Being able to intervene in this sensitive period for psychic development is the best preventive work at the level of mental health that can be performed.
What practices favor good psychological health for the woman who is a mother and her baby?
In general, all practices and interventions that have the objective of preventing and minimizing psychological distress and increasing women's well-being, as well as favoring, fostering and strengthening a safe bond between the mother and her baby: to offer all the information available to that the woman can consciously decide, support breastfeeding, avoid cesarean sections and unnecessary interventions and practices advised against for her damages to the mother and the baby, avoid separating the mother from the baby, have accompaniment during pregnancy and childbirth, Respect the needs of the woman who will be a mother and her baby, etc.
With this we leave today the conversation with the psychologist Meritxell Sánchez, in which we are discovering many things about how Primal Health influences perinatal psychological well-being of mothers and babies. Tomorrow we will continue.
