Pregnancy after childbirth and the difficulties of the puerperium

Often the experience of pregnancy is presented and described in watertight compartments, in an exclusively idealized and romantic way. A sort of fantastic event, decontextualized and uncontaminated, isolated in time and space, which lasts nine months, which begins with conception and it ends and runs out with childbirth and the birth of a new life.

The same attention of the family and the community is usually focused on gestation as such, on the transformations that the woman experiences for forty weeks and on the fear of possible risks and unexpected events.

So, once the birth has taken place, the baby is born, the party can begin. You can breathe a sigh of relief. If the mother and the baby are well there is no more reason to worry. Relatives and friends rush to the hospital, crowding the mother's bed with cameras, flowers, chocolates and advice on how to dress, care for and breastfeed the new arrival. the more it seems done. D "now on, many think, it will be a joyous stroll.

The mass media in this sense play a fundamental role today. The image of newborn babies, already clean, serene, smiling and combed, dominates the commercial spots and stands out on the billboards. Proud and satisfied mothers are interviewed already a week after giving birth, showing off a line and a shape even better than what it characterized them before pregnancy.Everything looks beautiful.Everything appears easy.

In reality, things are not always like this. For many women and for many couples, the difficulty comes right now. Just when they don't expect it. Indeed, when everyone "expects" from them only enthusiasm and happiness.

In reality, the birth of a child - an event in itself extraordinary and full of hope - also involves a series of profound and delicate physical, psychological and social upheavals.

Above all it means the beginning of a new life not only for the person concerned but also for the mother, the couple, and more generally for the whole family. A life that will naturally bring with it joys and satisfactions, but inevitably also obstacles and difficulties to manage and overcome.

This inherent complexity of each life will have developed for nine months with the fetus and will manifest itself immediately after its birth. From the first moment. From the first breath. From the moment in which that imaginary child who for nine months was idealized by his parents takes shape, he acquires a face, becoming flesh and blood. Transforming into something autonomous and independent. A body, an identity, tangible, with measures, proportions, features.

The newborn occupies a space, physical and emotional; manifests itself with a cry and a smile; it brings with it needs, therefore requests. Requests for attention, affection, nourishment, reassurance and warmth. Comfort requests. Accompanying requests. Requests that, in different forms according to the different stages of life, will continue over time.

Faced with this novelty - embodied in the "real" child, finally born into the world, and in its multiple meanings - it is obviously the parents who have to answer first. It is they who are suddenly called to redefine themselves. And this both in personal terms, father and mother as individuals, and as a couple. And of course as a triad, that is, as a family. It is a fascinating task. A wonderful challenge destined to complete them as women and as men. But it is certainly not a sweet linear walk as it often appears in newspapers and on the small screen.

From the very first hours of a newborn's life, doubts and uncertainties, both said and unspoken, ancestral fears, mix with joy, euphoria and contentment, in the minds and hearts of the vast majority of new parents. Physical and hormonal, psychological and emotional, social and cultural factors intersect forming a labyrinth of small-large traps and pitfalls from which in the end one can emerge stronger and enriched but also deeply confused and wounded.

And precisely in this context, after the very first hours after childbirth - which generally see the woman tired, physically exhausted, but euphoric and satisfied by the awareness of "having made it" - mixed feelings can take over her, like a bolt from the blue. of anxiety and melancholy (we speak of "baby-blues"), if not authentic puerperal psychosis, up to states of real depression with feelings of love-hate towards the newborn.

The afterbirth - hence the expulsion of the placenta - in fact causes a rapid collapse in the production of hormones such as estrogen and progesterone. The result is an almost automatic drop in mood which often, even in non-pathological cases, results in sleep disturbances. impatience and apparently unmotivated and sudden tears.