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The seminar will explore an infant mental health approach to the perinatal period and will focus on the experience of relationships: parents, newborns, and providers. Families who bring newborns into their lives face a full spectrum of emotions including joy and wonderment as well as uncertainty and stress. Families with newborns grapple with small and large “crises” as they navigate the fourth trimester. Pregnancy and new parenting brings the personal history of past relationships face to face with a newborn and the future that will grow from this relationship. Pregnancy and new parenting is a time wrapped in exhaustion that easily heightens vulnerabilities. It is also a time of dreaming of what life can be like for the new baby and what it will mean to the family. Parents face this time wondering how they can prepare themselves for their future.
Two interventions will be introduced:
The Community-Based Family Administered Neonatal Activities (C-B FANA), a perinatal guide designed to promote parent-child attachment beginning in utero. Family Connects Illinois, a universal approach for working with families with newborns will also be discussed. This model is transformative It is a time in that it responds to the reality that all families with newborns benefit from some level of support. Family Connects Illinois begins to bring new opportunities to Illinois families.
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