ABSTRACT
This chapter is about comfort and containment. It examines the nature of space from an architectural, medical and psychoanalytic perspective. Offering beneath the surface interpretations the author Rachel Ellison shares a poem about the experience of being a mother of a critically ill new-born premature child. The chapter analyses what goes on inside an incubator – comfort, containment and food, as well as necessary but sometimes painful medical interventions – through to skin-to-skin holding outside the incubator. The psychological impact of caring for babies born too early, too small or too sick is considered from a nurse’s perspective. Themes include splitting in order to cope and to continue to care, individual and systemic exhaustion of the NHS, whole family care, managing psychological risk – burn out, nurses taking sick time, mental health – and physiological risk to the babies, including infection. The role of breastfeeding and expressing breast milk is explored in relation to the promotion of an oxytocin versus cortisol state for both the baby and its parents, together with the promotion of health growth and development. Other spaces considered include the bus – an umbilical cord to and from the neonatal intensive care unit and the metaphorical space for spirituality in the ward. Themes include high dependency, independence, attachment, endings and loss.
