“Não sei porque você se foi, quantas saudades eu senti”: vivências de mulheres em luto perinatal.

Abstract

Mourning in the face of perinatal death is specific and different from a real loss, since the mother has never known the object of her mourning and the sudden death of the baby also represents the loss of a maternal identity. It is at this moment, after the knowledge that something that has not happened, that the expectations and desires to generate a life are forbidden, and suffering and reaction to loss take repercussions. This study aims to investigate the experiences of mothers in perinatal mourning. This is an exploratory research, with a qualitative approach, carried out with women in perinatal mourning accompanied by the multidisciplinary team of a public maternity hospital in Paraíba. Eighteen women aged between 18 and 46 years who experienced perinatal loss from the 9th week of pregnancy to 20 days of birth participated in the study. From the discourses of the bereaved women it was possible to elaborate two thematic categories: Thematic Category 1 - Grieving Process, which was divided into three subcategories: Subcategory 1 - Anticipatory mourning; Subcategory 2 - Grief work and Subcategory 3 - poorly elaborated grief and Thematic Category 3 - Process of caring for the parturient, which was divided into two subcategories: Subcategory 1 - Authentic care and Subcategory 2 - Inauthentic care. In general, it was observed that most women elaborated the loss of their babies, went through the work of mourning, experiencing feelings of shock, denial, guilt, ambivalence, and, thus, resignifying their pains, however, other women could not elaborate the loss of the dead baby. With regard to the care process, there was, in general, a gap in humanized care to women, especially in the intrapartum and puerperal period. It is considered essential and urgent to develop and implement a public policy focused on perinatal mourning, from the immediate puerperium to its home return, which can be conducted by the entire multidisciplinary health team of Primary Health Care.