The Janus Face of Prenatal Diagnostics by Engels Eve-Marie; Leuzinger-Bohleber Marianne; Tsiantis John & Eve-Marie Engels & John Tsiantis

Author:Engels, Eve-Marie; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Marianne; Tsiantis, John & Eve-Marie Engels & John Tsiantis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

The last session (five weeks later)

Mrs X looks very nice, smartly dressed, with a new hairstyle and obviously a new hair colour, too. She felt much better, she says: in the meantime she has even been able to bear looking into prams, and “I’m crying less.” Recently, she has been visited by a friend with his handicapped daughter. Mrs X says, “It is bad if a child is always going wild and is so weird.” She talked with her friend about his daughter for quite a long time. I ask whether she thought about her son at that moment. “Yes”, she answers, “I thought that he probably wouldn’t have lived. That’s what they say on the Internet, too. Most of them die within the first half-hour.” Then, she speaks about keepsakes of her son. “We have footprints and photos of the baby.” I ask where she keeps the photos, and whether she looks at them frequently. She explains, “I first kept them in the living room. But my husband did not want them any longer. Now they are in the bedroom and I often look at them in the evenings. Friends say I should put them away in a box. I always think about that.” She looks at me questioningly. I become pensive, think about whether the patient wanted to “put away” some part of the mourning process and ask her why her friends made such a proposal. “Don’t know,” she answers, and looks absent-minded. She begins to talk about the calculated birthday and the forthcoming burial. I ask whether she was afraid of the funeral. “No,”, she says, “I rather think it will be an end. I think I will find some peace afterwards.” But it was different with the calculated birthday, which was to be next week. “I dread this. It’s somewhat strange.” I ask what she believed her feelings would be like that day. She thinks about it, looks at me, shrugging her shoulders. “Grief?” I ask. She answers, “Grief. Grief and anger. Anger because of all those who have many children and don’t look after them.” [At the time of the crisis intervention there were increasing numbers of reports in Germany of severe child abuse and neglect.] I agree, and say that these emotions are likely to become more intense on the birthday. She nods. I go on to ask what she plans to do that day. Mrs X says, “I will go to work. I wanted to have a day off but it was impossible. There will be new goods delivered that day, which means a lot of work—that’s good.” Will her husband be there? “No,” she says, “he will be working all day and evening. I’d rather be alone that day, it wouldn’t be good with him.” I reply that she and her husband couldn’t find much common ground in the past. She agrees, “He moans, then doesn’t want to talk about it any longer. Men are different.” I add, “Men have different ways of mourning, they throw themselves into their work, for example.

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