Clinics in Mother and Child Health

Abstract

Pre and Post Natal Bonding to Prevent Child Abuse

María Teresa Sotelo Morales

Adverse and hostile emotions experienced by the mother during pregnancy derive in brain damage in the unborn child. These brain alterations are aggressions to a child during the gestational stage. The US National Institutions of Health report that rejection of pregnancy and absence of the maternal affective early bond, when combined with mental disorders in parents, is highly predictive risk factors for child abuse and intentional killing babies before 18 months of life.

Usually hospital intervention programs focus on the baby and mother health conditions; nonetheless, there is no data and assistance whatsoever of the child and his future living conditions, ignoring alarm violence risk factors . Preventing program has not yet been established predicting child abuse potential, taking control of cases before occurs; however, is a promising resolution that has been ignored or received less attention than models which intervene after maltreatment has been confirmed.

This essay concludes that the origin of child abuse by violent mothers occurs during the gestational stage in women emotionally disconnected from their nasciturus under conditions of severe depression and/or anxiety during pregnancy or after childbirth . Nevertheless, with the exclusion of severe psychiatric illnesses, the disturbing emotions derived from the rejection of pregnancy can potentially be reversed through a non-invasive, universal and low-cost hospital procedure.

Medical researchers are consistent that mother timely bonding is determinant to anchor affectionate care of her kid. Harrods Buhner evidences that both mothers and baby hearths produce emotional information which is transferred each other by the umbilical cord, molecularly anchored the meaning of the emotions in both organisms.

An obstetric intervention model is suggested to identify neonates at risk as well implementing a bonding cardioneurocognitive procedure during pre-natal, birth moment and post-natal stages to prevent abuse, abandonment or death.