1

2

THE MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION

Repairing the broken maternal-infant bond

by Tony Madrid, Ph.D.

3

A Portia-Xavier BookPublished by AsthmaBusters

Text copyright ©2010 by Antonio Madrid

3rd Printing, 2010

All right reserved. The Maternal-Infant Bonding Survey can be

reproduced without further permission.

ISBN 978-0-557-34624-0

Published in the USA by AsthmaBustersMonte Rio, CA 95462

Printed and bound in America

4

For Sister Xavier McPhee,who bonded us all

5

THE MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION

No, I would not give you false hopeOn this strange and mournful dayWhen the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away.

Oh, oh, little darling of mine,I can't for the life of me, Remember a sadder dayI know they say Let it be.It just don't work out that way.And the course of a life time runsOver and over again.

No I would not give you false hopeOn this strange and mournful dayWhen the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away.

Oh, little darling of mine,I just can't believe it sothough it seems strange to say,I've never been laid so,In such a mysterious wayIn the course of a life time runs,Over and over again.

No I would not give you false hopeOn this strange and mournful dayWhen the mother and child reunion Is only a moment away.

Paul Simon

6

CONTENTS

1. The Miraculous Mother and Child Reunion

2. Maternal-Infant Bonding

3. Bonding Therapy

4. Difficult Children

5. About Hypnosis and EMDR

6. Asthmatic Children

7. Bonding from the Get-Go and Morning Sickness

8. Adopted Children

9. Unbonded Adults

10. Cases from the Files of Sister Xavier McPhee

11. In the Mothers’ Own Words

12. Protocol for Therapists

13. The Maternal-Infant Bonding Survey

14. References

7

8

FORWARD

This book is written for the mother who is wondering why her relationship with her child is not quite right. Why have they never gotten along? Why has parenting been a burden? Why has she not felt that close to this child? What went wrong?

She may think, “My relationship with my other children is just fine; but it’s not been that way with this one.” It’s been a mystery and a great pain in her heart.

For over 30 years I have heard mothers ask this heart-breaking question. And for many of them, the answer has been quite simple: Something went wrong during the pregnancy or birth. It was not their fault.

For many of them, there is a solution. This book is written for these mothers.

Tony Madrid, Ph.D.Russian River CounselorsMonte Rio, CA

9

10

1 THE MIRACULOUS MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION

My wife was having a baby in 1977, and her doctor gave her the book Maternal-infant Bonding , by Marshall Klaus, M.D., and John Kennell, M.D. Valerie commented that she didn't need a book to know how to have a baby and gave it to me to read. This book changed my life as a psychologist.

Several months later a mother came into my psychology office, asking for therapy for daughter’s asthma, which was severe. She was put on steroids several times a year. She was on a regular regime of asthma medications and used rescue inhalers all the time. She was in the emergency room at least once a month, barely able to squeeze air into her tiny lungs.

The little girl couldn't be helped by me or my associates. We tried relaxation techniques, visualization methods, behavior therapy, family therapy, and hypnosis. She would get better for an hour or two, but the improvement did not last. Finally we gave up, and the girl stopped coming in

11

for help. But her mother continued counseling for six months, and during that time she talked about her life and difficulties.

She occasionally talked about her daughter. One day, she tearfully admitted that she really did not love her—had none of the maternal feelings for her that she heard other mothers express. She said that this was from the very beginning. Having just read Maternal-infant Bonding, I asked her to tell me the story of her birth.

It was a nightmare. Her husband left her in the middle of the pregnancy, breaking her heart; she did not recover from this. When she went into labor, her own mother was in the labor room, treating her horribly. The labor nurse was insulting and demeaning as well. When it was time to deliver her baby, her own doctor was not present; and someone she didn't know delivered the baby. Everything was wrong.

Her baby was born jaundiced, taken immediately away; and she was not allowed to spend peaceful, private time with her for days. She said that she felt funny holding her for the first time. The final blow occurred when the hospital sent her home and kept her baby for several days. When she returned to get her baby, she distinctly remembered thinking: "This doesn't feel like my baby. I think it belongs to the hospital more than to me. Maybe they should keep it." From the very beginning she never felt right about her daughter.

Klaus and Kennell, in their book, shed light on why she felt this way. It was simple. She wasn't

12

bonded to her daughter. Her pregnancy and delivery were loaded with traumas; and to top it off, she was kept away from her baby during that very sensitive time after birth, when bonding usually occurs. Since the mother and child did not bond, of course she had no feelings for her. But it wasn't her fault; this is what usually happens when mothers are kept away from their children or when there are traumas during pregnancy or birth.

I explained this to her, and she was noticeably relieved. This was the first time she understood why she did not love her daughter and she learned that it was not her fault. I asked her if she wanted to work on this, and she agreed.

I hypnotized her and took her back to the pregnancy and birth to heal those traumas: the divorce, her mother in the labor room, the nasty nurse, the strange doctor, and the separation from her baby. She did this quickly.

I then asked her to imagine a new pregnancy, in which there was no heartbreak. This time, she could be joyful. When it came time to go into labor, she could have anyone present that she wanted, and she could pick the doctor of her choice. Finally, she got to hold her baby immediately after she was born and keep her close from then onward. As she imagined this last picture, she wept with joy. She was brought out of hypnosis, and she was beaming.

She continued in therapy for a few months, and we did not talk about it again. On her last day

13

in therapy before she moved to another state, she said,

Remember that day we did hypnosis about my daughter’s birth? Well, since that day I now love her! It was amazing; I just fell in love with her. And also surprising, her asthma went away that day. She has had no more emergency room visits, no more wheezing, no need for medicine, no asthma at all.

Since that time, my colleagues and I have treated many patients who suffer from problems associated with bonding disruptions. As with this woman and her daughter, the treatment is simple and quick; and the results are amazing—little miracles. This book will tell the stories of these mothers and their children who have been helped by bonding therapy.

The stories of the mothers and children in this book are shuffled and pasted together from many people, to preserve the privacy of the actual mothers and children who were treated by our staff.

14

2 MATERNAL-INFANT BONDING

Maternal-Infant Bonding is a term first used by two doctors, Marshall Klaus and John Kennell, pediatricians at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1975 they wrote the remarkable book Maternal-infant Bonding which was responsible for revolutionizing the way hospitals handle mothers and newborns. Before their work, the usual way that children were birthed in hospitals was quite inhumane. The baby was born, briefly shown to the mother, and then was whisked away to the nursery where it was warehoused with all the other babies. After mothers and babies had spent nine months together during their pregnancy, they were now separated. I've heard mothers say that they felt

15

heartbroken and so empty without their baby. They felt that their babies were stolen from them.

Klaus and Kennell reviewed research about animals and separation at birth, and discovered that mothers will attach themselves to their offspring if kept close to them after birth. But if the baby is removed, the mother will reject it, refusing to nurse or care for it, leaving it to wither and die. Across many species, this is the pattern.

For example, if lambs are separated at birth and this continues for four hours, 50% of ewes will reject their lambs. If the separation lasts for 12 to 24 hours, the rejection rate climbs to 75%. By contrast, if the 24-hour separation does not commence until two to four days after birth, all the ewes will reaccept their lambs.

Studies with monkeys are equally telling. Mothers who are separated from their infants for one hour after birth will still show a preference for them in a choice situation. But if the initial separation lasts for 24 hours, the mother's preference for her baby seems to disappear. The sooner after birth the separation occurs, the stronger the effects.

For each species there is a window of opportunity during which bonding most likely occurs. In humans that window seems to last for an hour or so; and in that hour the mother and child are optimally prepared for bonding to each other.

What happens when human babies are kept away from their mothers? This has been studied.

16

Groups of mothers were given extended contact with their babies after birth and compared with babies and mothers who had limited contact. At the time of these studies the limited contact group were given the standard hospital care of the day: baby is shown to mom; baby is then removed to nursery; mom holds baby during feeding at a later time. The following list of differences were reported across numerous studies.

Extended contact mothers: nursed their babies longer (by months). nursed their babies while looking at

them. talked to their babies in a distinctly

different kind of voice. had fewer incidents of child abuse. had fewer colicky children. had children who were calmer. had children who were easier to please. had fewer incidents of babies who failed

to thrive. had children with higher IQs. had children with fewer medical

problems.

In one clever study, an Extended Contact Group and a Limited Contact Group were followed for several years. The mothers were asked, "If your baby is crying and you have already fed him, burped him, changed him and checked for diaper pins, what would you do?" The Limited Contact mothers said, "I'd let him cry himself to sleep." The Extended Contact mothers said, "I'd pick him up and carry him around."

17

The mothers were asked "How old should your child be before you would consider getting a baby sitter and going out with your husband?" Results: much older for the Extended Contact mothers.

These mothers and infants were watched at a pediatrician's examination. The Limited Contact mothers handed over their babies to the doctor and then sat down while the doctor did the examination. The Extended Contact mothers stood right there with the doctor and stayed close to their babies, not leaving them alone with the doctor, often holding a hand or a foot.

When the children were toddlers, these groups were watched in the pediatrician's waiting room. The Extended Contact children were able to play quietly by themselves. Their mothers asked them questions, and they looked at each other frequently. Contact seemed to be made by eyes and voice. The Limited Contact children spent more time touching their mothers and pulling at them. These mothers gave orders and were less patient. They looked at them less frequently than the other group.

As a psychologist, I have been keeping my ears open for things that a mother says that may indicate that she is not bonded to her child. Here are some of the things I hear:

There has been something wrong with this baby from the beginning.

18

When I first held the baby, I didn't have any of the feelings that I thought I should have.

When I first held baby, I was overwhelmed and frightened.

When I first held baby, I thought that there was something wrong with him.

This child was difficult to console; nothing could make him comfortable.

This child has not been affectionate. This child is always "at me." This was a very colicky baby. This baby had breathing problems. I don't feel for this child like I do for my

other children. This child is antsy, into this and that,

nervous, and fidgety. Nothing I could do would ever make this

child happy. I got depressed after the baby was born.

When I hear things like this, I suspect that there is a bonding problem and I begin to look for the cause. If there is bonding problem, there is always a reason for it. It is not the mother’s fault.

Klaus and Kennell say that mothers always bond with their children unless something interferes. They then point out that two things typically prevent bonding: (1) physical separation at birth; or (2) emotional separation at the time of pregnancy or birth.

19

(1) Physical Separation

Many things can contribute to physical separation. The way hospitals birthed children (until recently) was a major contributor to non-bonding. The baby was born, shown to the mother, and then banished to the nursery. When our son was born in 1977, we had to threaten the hospital staff with a law suit just to be able to keep him with his mother.

When mothers are anesthetized, unconscious at birth, they may not have bonded. Mothers who have Cesarean Sections may not have bonded because they felt traumatized or drugged after the birth; or if they have a spinal, they can be so scared by what was happening and were "out of it." Many mothers have said that they could hardly remember holding their baby because they were so sick or so foggy from the medications used. And when they did not have an alert connection with their baby in that sensitive hour after birth, they may have lost their first chance to bond.

Mothers of twins and triplets often bond with only one child. Several factors seem to account for this. One child may be kept in the Intensive Care Nursery, while the other child stays longer with the mother; or, perhaps, bonding is too intense to do with both children. It might also be that the mother bonded with only one while she was pregnant, not knowing that she was carrying two.

Mothers whose children spend a great amount of time in an incubator often do not bond. Hospitals now allow mothers to spend time with

20

their babies, and sometimes that is enough to bond. The physical separation may be only part of the problem; the other part is the trauma that the mothers experience by having a very sick or fragile baby or being sick themselves.

Children occasionally are kept in the hospital, and their mothers are sent home without them. This separation has been devastating to mothers, and they remember clearly those terrible days away from their baby.

All of these memories stick in the minds of mothers, like war scenes in a Iraqi War Vet’s mind, impossible to shake. When they think of the birth of their child, instead of sweet pictures and feelings, they dredge up horrible scenes and terrible emotions.

Mothers of adopted children can be bonded to their new baby, but this is not common. Sometimes adoptive mothers prepare themselves for receiving their new baby in a deliberate, intense fashion, almost like they are carrying the unborn child. These mothers have a good chance of bonding. I heard one mother describe her first adoption in this manner, and she was clearly bonded to that baby. She and her husband prepared a bedroom, bought clothes, went through baby name books, thought about their baby all the time. She bonded to this child. Her second adopted child, however, was sprung upon her without warning; and she did not bond with that child.

Not every mother who is separated from her baby at birth is unbonded. Dr. Klaus has noted that

21

mothers are resilient, and many mothers somehow manage to bond, gathering their resources to repair the accidents that occurred at birth. They bond at a later date.

(2) Emotional Separation

Klaus and Kennell state that bonding almost always occurs--unless something interferes with it. “Physical separation” is the first class of events that prevent bonding; the second is "emotional separation." If the mother is going through something in her life that is terribly upsetting, bonding can be interrupted. Traumatic emotions can be so strong that they can actually block out bonding.

Great grief often prevents bonding. If a mother is mourning about the death of a parent, she most likely will not be able to bond. The grief can be so encompassing that there is no room for any other emotion. She is soaked in sadness, and there can be no joy in having a baby.

Mothers can have all kinds of incapacitating sadness--a brother died in the war during her second trimester, a father had a heart attack and nearly died, another child got seriously sick, a dear friend died six months before pregnancy. All of these losses can take the mother’s mind away from her baby.

Mothers who are very sick may not bond--so sick that she cannot pay good attention to her baby, and because of this she may have a hard time connecting to it. The connection may come

22

afterwards, but often they report that the feeling was not there and they never got it. Mothers who get ill during the pregnancy or delivery may be so sick immediately after the birth, that they cannot feel anything for the baby. I have heard mothers say that they were so sick that they didn’t even know if they had a boy or girl.

Trauma and grief can come from marital problems. If her husband left her during pregnancy, a mother most likely will not bond. Many unbonded mothers will report that they were so upset because their husbands were in trouble with drugs or alcohol. Emotionally tossed by the problems that this caused in the marriage, there was no space to connect with their baby. Some mothers find out during the pregnancy that their husbands were having an affair, and their pain prevents any possibility of bonding. Marital problems are a common cause of bonding problems.

If another of her children is very sick and she is very worried about the child's health, she may not bond. Some mothers are so frightened by the health issue of the other child, that it breaks the connection to her new baby, either in the womb or after it is born. Her attention is drawn elsewhere, understandably.

If she had a recent miscarriage, especially after she felt the baby move, she may have a hard time bonding. If the miscarriage was within two years of this new pregnancy, bonding can be a problem. Miscarriages are very sad, and mothers will be affected. Mothers with many miscarriages can be so worried through her current pregnancy,

23

that there is no joy in the pregnancy and fear disrupts bonding.

If a mother had to move to another city, leaving friends and family behind, she may be so desolate and lonely that she will not bond.

Mothers addicted to drugs and alcohol may not bond. They may not know that there is a problem until they get clean and sober. Then they may say, “I don’t have any feelings for this baby.”

Some mothers have a difficult time bonding when they were severely unbonded to their own mothers. More often than not, though, a mother's own bonding history does not interfere with bonding to her own baby; but we have occasionally seen a mother whose own lack of bonding was the only reason why she could not bond to her own baby.

The bond, once established, can be broken later. Something can interfere and ruin it. Mothers report being bonded at first and losing it later, through some traumatic event. At times the fractured bond repairs itself; sometimes it doesn't.

Short of these physical and emotional separations--these accidents of birth--mothers will invariably bond with their new babies. Every type of mother bonds: neurotic mothers, shy mothers, abused mothers, smart mothers, mothers who did not graduate, worn out mothers, mothers who don’t like their own mothers, mothers without parents, all mothers. The things that prevent bonding are primarily accidents, things over which the mother

24

had no control—deaths, miscarriages, hospital mistakes, marital problems, illnesses. The mother is seldom to blame.

As mentioned above, when a mother does not bond with her child right at birth, she often will do so later—days, weeks, or months after the birth. We have all heard the story of a mother who felt tremendous love for her child following an accident or illness. It can happen naturally. Because mothers have this potential, they can also bond with some other type of intervention: Bonding Therapy.

Bonding Therapy helps a mother connect with her baby, in an easy, swift, powerful fashion. The remainder of this book gives examples of how this occurs.

25

3 BONDING THERAPY

Built right into our DNA, maternal-infant bonding is one of the strongest instincts in humans. Without this bond, our offspring would often die. Research has shown this: bonding disruptions are linked to incidents of failure to thrive, child abuse, and childhood diseases. This powerful drive in mothers links her to her child with such fierce love that she will overcome great obstacles that keep her from being close to and protecting her baby. A mother’s love is proverbial.

Maternal love is an emotion that is hard- wired into mothers. The bonding emotion is so much a part of a mother’s nature, that when it is missing, she knows it in her bones, feels it in her heart, and is saddened by it. If given the chance to get it, she can and will get it. The desire to bond is

26

so primal and intense, that an unbonded mother will lie in the weeds waiting for the first opportunity to bond, and she will jump at the opportunity to feel close to her baby. We have found that with a little help, the bond can be restored.

As seen in the previous chapter, maternal-infant bonding is disrupted primarily by two types of events: separation at birth and maternal trauma during pregnancy or birth. When those events are removed from a non-bonded mother and replaced in her mind by the birth she wanted, she then will bond with her child. It is that simple.

The process for bonding a mother to a child is very straightforward. First she needs to find out what went wrong. Second, she needs to process or heal the original impediment. And finally she needs the experience of having the baby in a new manner. Clear up the debris from the original birth; and then see and feel what it would be like to have the baby anew. Then she will bonded to her baby.

For example, if a mother of a four year old girl lost her own father during the second month of pregnancy, she most likely would not bond with her baby. She would say that there was something missing, that the baby is not quite right, and that she thought it would be different than it is. She would be sad much of the time and perhaps even be diagnosed with Postpartum Depression.

Through bonding therapy, she would go back to the pregnancy and resolve all grief that she was experiencing at that time. This would be fairly easy, because she probably has already gone

27

through the grief process and can bring that process to her pregnancy. This resolution of grief could be achieved through lots of methods—journaling, art work, hypnosis, EMDR, talking, remembering, or any other natural or therapeutic way that people resolve great sadness.

She could then begin to know what it feels like to be pregnant without grief. She could experience the joys of pregnancy, which she did not feel originally. She could go through each of the trimesters, in a new way. She could connect with her baby throughout the pregnancy, love her little girl without distraction or sadness. She could love her daughter from the very beginning of her life in the womb. Then she could deliver her baby and see her and be with her and feel, in a new way. She would now be bonded.

Another example. A mother is sent home without her baby because her baby is sick. She is separated from her baby for two days. She is filled with fear and sadness. When she picks up the baby and brings her home, she feels that there is still something wrong with the baby. She is more worried than anything. She does not feel very close to the baby. She sits on the edge of the bed and thinks, “There’s something not right here.”

In bonding therapy, she would clear up the residual fear from her baby’s being sick. She would also wipe out any remaining grief and sadness about being sent home without her baby. She could do this through any of the methods listed above.

28

Then she could go through the pregnancy, delivery, and hospital stay with her daughter being healthy this time. She would not be separated from her daughter. She would imagine returning home with the baby, and she would know what life with her daughter is like without any separation, difficulties, or worries. She would sit on the edge of the bed and feel an overwhelming love for her daughter. She would now be bonded.

That is all there is to it.

We use hypnosis and also EMDR to accomplish the two tasks of removing the old trauma and bringing into her imagination the new birth. Hypnosis is an age-old tool for clearing out trauma and creating new memories. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapeutic tool that has been around for 20 years and learned by thousands of therapists. It uses eye movements while thinking about a trauma to dissolve the feelings and associations linked to the traumatic event. Both techniques are quick and effective, but there are many other ways to do bonding therapy. I have seen therapists use art therapy, psychodrama, and family therapy to achieve rebonding

When a mother is not bonded to her baby, it can also occur later, in a natural way. Slowly, through the course of time, a mother can get closer to her baby and feel more love for it. Sometimes a shocking event can bring about the bonding. For example, a mother might rescue her baby from a dangerous situation and at that moment she begins to feel great love for her baby. One mother told me

29

that she was swept away with love when she saw a TV account of a child who died in an auto accident. At that time, for some reason, she broke through whatever had blocked her own love.

Mothers who have not bonded to their baby can bond later and often do without any therapeutic intervention. However, when it does not occur naturally, bonding therapy is available. The rest of the book will demonstrate the kinds of situations that are amenable to bonding therapy and how it is done.

30

4 DIFFICULT CHILDREN

"I love him but I don't like being around him." This is a common cry of a mother who has not bonded to her child. She has a lack of warm feelings about her child. Simply put: she does not like him. She may feel guilty: she knows that something is terribly wrong. She still takes care of the child despite lacking the wonderful rewards of bonding. She may be overprotective as a deliberate method of protection, since it doesn’t come naturally. She may be angry at him much of the time; she may get depressed because of it. She gives of herself without any joy. Without knowing it, she actually is a saint.

31

The children who are not bonded have many characteristics in common. They are figidity, clingy, sad, and demanding. Mothers report that they were never able to be satisfied, soothed, or comforted. Mothers also often say that they were not affectionate. These children seem to bother their mothers, rub them the wrong way, irritate them. Other adults may like the child more than the mother does.

__________________________________________

"Something is definitely missing" Trevor and Margaret

When Margaret came to see me with 9 year old Trevor, she looked beaten up. She had reached her limit, she said. He was unruly, mean, difficult; and now he had begun to assault her. She said that he was always difficult: disobedient, unruly, wild, mean, and now aggressive. Child counseling and family counseling had not helped. Her girl friend was taking a class from me at USF and told her that she should talk to me.

She had a meeting with me. She said that she always took good care of him but she had no feelings about it. She just went through the motions. He felt so very distant. She knew something was missing right from the beginning. In fact she remembered that when she was sitting on the bed, after she got out of the hospital, she was holding the baby and looking at it and started crying. "There is something missing," she told her

32

husband. I told her about maternal-infant bonding and asked her about Trevor’s birth.

Margaret had nothing but painful memories about his birth. Her water broke, and she went to the hospital and had 18 hours of labor. A Cesarean delivery was finally performed. She had to be "knocked out," because the epidural didn't work.

She came out of the anesthesia in an enormous amount of pain. She was given pain medications, and she went back to sleep. She had only a few memories of the hospital: breast feeding and changing his diapers. But those memories were in a fog. It was clear that she did not bond. She was relieved to know that her troubles with Trevor were not her fault nor his and that this could be repaired.

She cleaned up the birth memories, one after another—the long labor, the C-Section, the failed epidural, being knocked out, the great amount of pain afterwards, and foggy beginnings. She was able to do this with EMDR. It took about 30 minutes, working diligently to heal old wounds and memories. When she was done with the birth scenes, I asked her to think about the assaults that she endured during his early childhood, while we continued with EMDR. She responded well to the notion that she could heal these assaults. A great resolution appeared to be happening.

Next, a new birth was installed. She imagined pictures and feelings of having an easy labor and birth, of being awake and alert, of knowing her son right from the beginning. She

33

cried when she first saw him and he looked at her. He knew her; and she knew he knew her.

Next, his growing up was seen with this as a new beginning. She got a picture and a feeling about a new life with him. There was a fear expressed about the future. With a couple of more EMDR “passes,” she heard inside herself, "I can do this!"

That was the last of bonding therapy with Margaret. She called two months later. She said, "I had to come to terms with lots of feelings I knew I had. I never felt I had a commitment to him. It was like someone else's child living here and there was no emotional attachment. It was understandable; but, nonetheless, I realized how cruel it was for him."

She went on to say, "Things are so different now. When his dad and I left the house the other night, he said, "Are you coming back for me." He never said that before." Her husband told her what a significant change there had been. He noticed that there were fewer battles. She said that when they have disagreements now, she doesn’t stay upset as long. She catches herself sooner, and that was a very big difference.

A month later, she reported that Trevor was very close and affectionate, for the first time ever. He was under her wing constantly, just as if he were two years old. It felt good.

34

"We have never gotten along." Christine and Monica

In classes that I teach for USF, I usually spend some time on Maternal-infant Bonding. Invariably, some woman will say that this is exactly what happened to her and her child and she had not see the connection before that class. One such mother was Christine.

Christine reported that she and her 8 year old daughter Monica had never gotten along. She had two other children, younger by two and four years, and Christine got along very well with them. Monica and Christine just never clicked.

Monica was obstinate, disrespectful (to Christine), and yet she obeyed her father and her teachers. She was not affectionate with her mother, and her mother owned that she did not feel warm towards Monica either. Monica's anger was thinly veiled, matched only by Christine's hostility; and the two of them would be locked in a life-long battle if things did not get better.

After sitting through my class, Christine knew exactly what went wrong. When she was six months pregnant, her younger brother died in an automobile accident. She was very close to this brother, partly raising him after their mother died when he was 6 and she was 10. Overpowered by grief, there was no room in her to have loving feelings for her own baby. She often thought that perhaps she resented her daughter for living while her brother died, or she blamed herself for one thing or another. The truth of it was that this type of grief

35

is incompatible with bonding. No one in her situation could have bonded, and she had not known this before the class.

When Monica was born, Christine remembered thinking, "I have no room in my heart for this baby. I am too sad to do this. Maybe it will get better later." Unfortunately, it did not get better later. The first year she knew that her feelings for her baby were not normal; she didn't even think her baby was cute.

Very bright, Monica did everything in her power to get her mother's attention and love; but Christine just felt put-upon and burdened. She did not receive any of the warm feelings that accompany bonding. She ran on will power and a sense of duty. She blamed herself, reasoning that there was something intrinsically wrong with her as a mother. She was a graduate student in psychology, yet she did not make the connection between her brother's death and her inability to bond. Now, at least, she knew that this was not her fault.

All of this came out in class, as part of the discussion following the presentation on Maternal-infant Bonding. Christine said that she'd like to fix this problem and would do it as a class demonstration. Many demonstrations had already been done in this graduate level hypnosis class, so she was comfortable with the procedure. The therapy took just a few minutes since Christine already knew about hypnosis, Maternal-infant

36

Bonding, the impediments to bonding, and her specific impediment.1

The therapy was very streamlined. First, she cleared up all of the grief about her brother. Eight years had transpired since his death, so that was easy. Next, she cleared up any residual sadness about her mother's death; just the right amount so that she could be joyful in pregnancy. Then she went to the beginning of her pregnancy with Monica and relived the pregnancy without any grief, right up to the birth. Christine beamed and cried when she imagined first holding her baby. She brought that beginning (and feeling) through the first couple of days, couple of weeks, and couple of years. "Will your subconscious mind accept this new birth history," I asked. She responded that it was possible.

At the next class Christine reported some surprising changes. Monica's anger was gone. She no longer felt like a pest. She told her mother every day that she loved her. And Christine said that she now felt that she knew what it was to love her daughter. Twenty years later at a conference, I ran into Christine. She reminded me of the "bonding therapy" we did in class and told me that their lives completely changed after than brief experience.

____________________________________

1 "Impediment" comes from the Latin word impedimentum meaning baggage, burden.

37

"I just can hardly stand to be around her." Catherine and Little Wendy

Catherine worked with a woman who was my student at USF, and my student urged her to meet with me to talk about her relationship with her daughter. She and her daughter “rubbed each other wrong.” Her daughter wore her down. She pulled at her all the time, asking and demanding and not seeming to get what she wanted. She was exhausted by her daughter. Little Wendy was just 3½.

When she told me about Little Wendy's birth, it was clear what went wrong: she was sick from the moment she got pregnant, vomiting throughout the entire nine months. She couldn't get off the couch; and no one understood how sick she was. She had a very, very hard time. It was one long nightmare. Also, she had just moved to California before she got pregnant. She did not have family or friends here to help her while she was so nauseous.

This was compounded by the delivery itself. After 34 hours of labor, she had a C-section. When she went home, she was very ill and couldn't take care of her daughter. Then it was discovered that she had ongoing health problems, which led to a serious depression; and she didn't get out of the woods for a year. Her health never recovered, and she had been very athletic before the pregnancy . She couldn't work out, she gained an inordinate amount of weight, and she and her daughter had a hard time together. She said:

38

I was so sick during my pregnancy and afterwards, that it completely changed my life. I was nauseated throughout the pregnancy, couldn't eat anything. I almost terminated the pregnancy. I was a very active person, and after my pregnancy I have been totally unable to be active. My whole life is horribly changed since then.

She also told a story of having a difficult relationship with her own mother, emphasizing that her mother was not a good mother. She never trusted her. She had not a single good feeling about her own mother.

I asked Catherine to put the issues about her own mother on the back burner for the time. We would just work on Wendy. She was able to do this with EMDR. Over the course of several weeks, she dissolved the painful, horrible memories wrapped up in her pregnancy. Throughout these weeks, she was noticing that her daughter did not bother her so much. She also noticed that we was beginning to find her daughter cute and enjoyable, no longer a burden.

Finally we were able to work on imagining a new birth, without the horrible nausea, pain, and depression. She was able to imagine this easily, now that the original traumas were dissolved. She beamed when she imagined holding her daughter after she was born, tearfully reporting later that “this is the way it should have been.”

At the next session, she said that her daughter climbed up into her lap when she returned

39

home and went to sleep, without a word. She felt wonderful holding her and rocking her.

A few days later she and her daughter visited the friend who referred her, and she told her friend about what we were doing. He daughter was wrapped in attention, big-eyed, totally absorbed in her mother’s report.

Catherine said,

Our lives are completely changed. She was such a burden, and now she’s the love of my life. Everything is reversed, and now I see how this all happened. I had blamed myself, and now I know it was all accidental. What’s most important is that it is totally changed.

She wrote me a letter a year later saying that things were still wonderful and that her life with Little Wendy was now blessed.

__________________________________________

"I knew we didn't start off on a good foot." Mia and Gianni

Mia was referred to me for bonding therapy by her own regular therapist, who figured out that lack of bonding was central to Gianni’s problems. Gianni was just hospitalized following a bout with suicidal thoughts and impulses. Mia came in alone for the first consultation. She reported that Gianni

40

was 17 and had been depressed for about two years. He had two bouts of sudden and serious depression when he was separated from his mother--once when he went to soccer camp and once when his mother went out of state to visit relatives. He had attempted suicide. He was in therapy and on antidepressants, neither of which seemed to make a difference. He was becoming a recluse. He was in a black hole and could not get out.

I asked her about his birth. Here’s what she said:

I got pregnant during my first job after becoming an attorney, and no one else in the office was pregnant. It was crazy to have a baby then. I felt I shouldn’t have done it I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't happy. I hid the fact that I was pregnant as long as I could. Afterwards, I couldn't take off work for very long. It was all so difficult.

He was born by C-Section. I was sick afterwards. We didn’t spent a lot of time together in the hospital. I knew something was wrong with us—that we didn’t bond--right away. He seemed separate. I thought I was going to be a terrible mother.

And here’s what’s horrible: I had to leave him with a baby sitter when I went to work; and when I would return at night, he wouldn't look at me for the longest time. I was heartbroken. I learned how to be a good mother, but it was not easy.

41

Mia and I finished getting all the history, and then I introduced her to hypnosis. When she was hypnotized, I asked her inner mind to begin the healing that was needed and told her that we would continue at the next appointment.

At the next appointment, I hypnotized her and asked her inner mind, once again, to clear out all the bad feelings and memories associated with Gianni’s pregnancy and birth. I asked her to tell me when this was done. After a few minutes, she indicated that she had done this.

Then I asked her to heal all the disturbing feelings around the time of Gianni’s birth, when she first held him—those first thoughts and feelings that bothered her so much. When she indicated that she could do this, I asked her to heal all original doubts and fears. And then the difficult times that she had for the first few months, and when she left him at the Day Care, and how he turned his head away when she came for him, and how he was so mad at her and how it hurt her.

After she completed these large tasks, I told her that she could know what it was like to be pregnant with Gianni without pain or fear or other distractions. She needed to know what it would be like to show off that she was pregnant. And when he was ready to be born, it could happen naturally and easily. She could feel what it’s like to have him placed on her chest and what it’s like to have him nurse. At this point, Mia started crying and smiling. I asked her to bring that feeling up from the beginning, week by week, month by month, and year by year to the present time.

42

She came out of hypnosis saying that she now knew what she missed. Nursing was easy. He was not angry with her this time. She could relax and go back to work.

At her next appointment, Mia said something was moving. Gianni got very angry at her and said that he wanted to leave the family and not come back. This was not like him; he had never done anything like that before. Then he came back and hugged her and said, "I love you, mommy," in a babyish way. He had not acted like this ever before. He asked her to put him to bed and say prayers with him. The next day he searched for her around the house and wanted to be with her. My, oh, my what a change, she said.

In a week, he was getting up and about without coaxing. He was beginning to phone his friends. He was spontaneously interacting with the family and beginning to laugh again.

He attended regular school the next year and had a great year. He was able to leave home for extended school outings. He had no more suicidal attempts, and his depression left him. He volunteered to be a camp counselor the next summer, and he accomplished this without incident. He and his mother were very close. The majority of his problems seemed to have stemmed from a bonding issue, an accidental one, which caused the basic instinctual love to be missing.

43

"My mother was a floozy" Brandy and Lenny

Brandy phoned to tell me that her aunt took a course from me at USF and she heard that I knew how to bond mothers to their children. She wanted me to do this for her and her five year old son, Leonard. Lenny was a boy that everyone loved, she said. She was the only one she knew who was unable to love him. She knew that she should love him and that he was very lovable, but she had no feelings of love for him. None whatsoever. He was an obligation. She always knew that something was wrong, and she was greatly encouraged when she heard from her aunt that this could be fixed.

I told her to ask her aunt to hypnotize her; and when she could be hypnotized easily, she should phone to make an appointment.

She phoned after two weeks and came in. At this first appointment, I usually intend to find the cause of the non-bond. There may be one or more events that caused this. In her case, the father of the baby left her half way through the pregnancy; but she said that this did not bother her at all. I found this hard to believe, so I hypnotized her and asked her subconscious mind the question, "Was Brandy bothered by her boyfriend's leaving her during the pregnancy?" “No, she wasn't,” was the response. She was right.

Another possibility was that she may have been separated from her son after the birth; but this was not the case. Perhaps she may have been separated later, but she wasn't. Was she sick during the pregnancy or after? “No.” Was she in poverty

44

and greatly overburdened by life. “Yes, she was,” but this was not a major problem. I believed her this time. Were she emotionally bothered during the pregnancy or afterwards, by anything? “No.”

I was running out of possibilities and told her so. She said, “Can my relationship with my mother have anything to do with it?” I told her that it was unlikely but possible; and she replied that she may be the rare case. Here is the story that she told.

I am the youngest of five children. My mother was a beautiful woman and an alcoholic. She was drunk most of the time. I was told that she was drunk when I was born. Hence my name, Brandy. The only memories I have of her are of her being very drunk and out of control When I was five years old, she ran off with a boyfriend and never returned to us. We all stayed with an aunt and uncle. I never saw her again. I have always hated her.

I told Brandy that it was worth looking into. It might be necessary for her to clear the pain from her own childhood, including the hatred that she felt for her mother. She might have to go through bonding with her mother first. She agreed to try.

I hypnotized her and asked her inner mind if this was the cause of her inability to love her child. The answer was, “Yes.” I asked her inner mind to clear out all the bad feelings about her childhood and her mother, signaling me when it was accomplished. Her face showed how difficult it was to do this; and finally she cried and was done.

45

Then I had her imagine a new pregnancy with a sober mother, who was joyful and happy to have a new baby. She followed that image through each phase of pregnancy. She could hear her mother’s heart beat and feel her mother talk. Then she was born and spent the first hour of her life engrossed with her mother. That feeling brought tears to her eyes. She was asked to carry that feeling through the first couple of months of life, then the first couple of years, noting what it felt like to be loved by her mother. This feeling was brought up to the time just before she got pregnant with her son. We scheduled the next meeting for a week later, when we would have her imagine a new birth for Lenny.

At the next meeting, Brandy seemed like a different person, smiling, animated, in a glow. She reported that on her hour-long trip home after our last meeting a strange thing happened. For the first time ever, she missed her son. She was surprised by this feeling and could not shake it. She could hardly wait to get home and be with him. When she arrived at her house and entered the living room, he jumped off the couch, came running to her, and jumped into her arms. He had never done that before. She said that they had been inseparable since then and it all feels different. She now loved him.

There was no need to bond her in a formal fashion because it it already happened once her own childhood was repaired. There is such a desire to be connected to one’s child that it often happens spontaneously once the impediment is removed.

46

“She’s just not affectionate” Mary and Callie

Mary said that she loved her little 4 year old daughter, Callie, but it didn't seem to be reciprocated. Callie seemed distant, hardly ever giving or seeking affection. She had been this way from the beginning. She was colicky for the first six months, hardly even sleeping through the night. In fact, her mother remembered thinking, "My sleep mechanism is broken forever." Callie got less colicky with time, but to the present time she acted like she didn't depend upon her mother for nurturance. She was cold and detached.

Mary had a very difficult, painful delivery. The birth was OK, but the chord was wrapped around her baby. For some reason, the medical team "jumped on her stomach," and she was "ripped apart," in her words. She said that she was "out of it" for six hours and eventually passed out.

We used hypnosis to remove the feelings of the horrific trauma surrounding Callie's birth. This took only a couple of minutes, no doubt because she had been working on this trauma ever since it happened. When she indicated that she was free from the effects of this painful birth, she was asked to replace it with a new quick, manageable birth. This was easily accomplished, and she followed it with holding her baby and staying with her without interference. They were brought back to the maternity ward together and shared the same bed. After a day, they went home together; and Callie was an easy baby, loving to be held. She slept through the night, right from the beginning. Then

47

time was forwarded to the present time, month by month, quickly.

We also worked on Mary's own birth a week before we did her daughter’s birth. She was a primi and spent three weeks in an incubator after her mother was released. Mary removed the trauma from her own birth; and she constructed a new birth.

At our third appointment, Mary reported:

Everything is totally different about my daughter. I don't know if it's from the work on my birth or Callie's birth. I feel like I'm a different person. Callie seems to see it and feel it, too. She's affectionate now. She lays all over me. She says, "Mom, let's do this; let's do that."

The day after my work, I walked in and she ran up to me and jumped on me. She's different. And every day since, she different. She says, 'Mommy, will you come sleep with me?' Never before. Our interactions are incredibly different. There's no fear. The other day, she was with her father at home and I was visiting a girl friend. She phoned and asked me to come home. That's the first time she's ever done that.

I checked in with her a year later. Callie and she were still doing great. They now had a warm, interdependent relationship. She remarked that the change was immediate and continuous. Sometimes it is just like that: immediate and continuous.

48

“There’s something missing, and I know it.” Megan and Saul

Megan was a petite 25 year old woman, who looked like she’d been through a lot in her life. She was honest, outspoken, courageous, and solid. She didn’t know right away that she was not bonded to Saul, but when she had her second child, she felt the difference. She had been strung-out on speed when she found out she was pregnant with Saul. She wanted to have an abortion, but it was too late. She went to jail during her pregnancy, had her baby, and was sentenced to a treatment program afterwards. She was released after a few months, and she moved in with a boyfriend who was still using, and she slipped right back to her addiction.

The baby was taken away from her at 10 months, and she could only see him for a few hours a week. She kept seeing him, though, and tried everything she could to get her baby back, which is a very difficult and extraordinary thing to accomplish, but she accomplished it. And when she got Saul, she felt that there was something wrong. He bothered her, grated on her, annoyed and irritated her. By this time, she already had her other child, Sally, and she felt the difference. Sally didn’t bother her or cry; Saul did. Sally didn’t seem over demanding; Saul did. So she knew that the bond was not there, and her counselor knew that something could be done about it. She was referred to our clinic.

She said that Saul’s’ birth was horrible. She was induced and was in labor from Sunday at 8 PM to Tuesday morning at 10 AM. The baby had a

49

bowel movement during birth and she got infected. She had a 104 fever and was very sick. She didn’t see the baby for a long time, and when she saw the baby, she was too sick to take care of it.

From the hospital, to the treatment facility, to her boyfriend’s house where there was chaos and drugs--she was destined to fail. She was back into drugs in no time, and the baby was getting drugs into his system as well. She was picked up and put back in jail, and she lost the baby to the county. She went into treatment again, and this time it seemed to stick. She was 8 months clean and sober, when she came to our clinic; she was an outspoken advocate of sobriety; she was the poster child of successful treatment.

She agreed to be a demonstration subject in a class I was teaching. She brought her aunt with her. She listened to the theory of Maternal-infant Bonding, and she nodded throughout the presentation. It all made sense to her, and she was primed for treatment. She outlined the main points about her relationship with Saul and the factors that brought about the disruption of bonding. She was ready.

She went into hypnosis quite easily, and she was able to “clear out” the traumas in her life that disrupted bonding. This took about five minutes. And then she imagined a new birth, with all the variables going right—she was clean and sober, she wanted the baby, the birth was easy, she was released to a supportive home, she was with the baby through all of his developmental stages, right

50

up to now. She smiled throughout the parts where she watched him growing up.

I said to her, when she was done, “I’m sure that there a lot of questions that everyone has for you right now, but you’ve just had a baby and should go home and be quiet. I’ll talk to you later.” Her aunt walked with her outside, and Megan said, “Everything was dark until she began to see the new birth, and then it all got light.”

Four days later, she phoned to say that her feelings of anger had changed towards Saul, but that she still didn’t feel very close to him. More needed to be done. When she came in for her next session, I asked what she thought was blocking her bonding. She said that it might be that she resented her son because he broke up the family—she had to stop seeing the man she loved. In hypnosis, I asked if this was true, and the answer was, “Yes.” I reminded her that because of her son: (1) she got clean; and (2) the man she loved also had to get clean. Was there some wiggle room about her son, considering this? She quickly changed her mind, and an aura appeared in her mind around her son; he was “an angel.”

A week later, she phoned to say that she was now feeling much closer to her son and he was no longer grating on her. She came in again a month later and reported that her love for him had grown, and now she found herself smiling uncontrollably when she watched him around the house. She knew now that there was a difference and she that loved her son.

51

“Now she’s hitting me!” Carmelita and Poppy

Everyone knew that Carmelita and Tommy should not have gotten married. It was a disaster from the start. Tommy criticized and berated her incessantly, even in front of friends and family. Her family could not tolerate it; and when Carmelita started complaining to her brothers and sisters, they advised her to leave him. It took 15 years for the advise to take hold. By that time, there were two children involved: Poppy ,12, and Little Tommy, 8.

Carmelita got everything in line: an attorney, money saved, a place for her husband to go, and her parents there beside her. She kicked him out. But from the day that this happened, Poppy was furious with her mother. She had always been feisty and mouthy, but now she was horrible.

I knew Carmelita since she was a teenager. The high school prom queen, she was very smart, pretty, and sweet. She went to Stanford Law School and was a practicing attorney. She phoned me from Portland where she had been living since she got married. She cried that there was nothing she could do with Poppy, when Poppy got into one of her snits. She always was furious when she came back from visiting her father, who lived in the same town and had half time custody. She was mouthy and mean. Poppy blamed her for the divorce. She challenged her on everything, even what they were going to have for meals. Constantly negative, she

52

carried a huge dark cloud over her. Surprisingly, Carmelita had no problems with her son.

This had gone on for two years after the separation. Bright, articulate, and a hard worker, Poppy was now getting Cs and Ds. Every action was a struggle; every word was sarcastic; every event was a disaster. Carmelita said that Poppy was a jerk all the time. I suggested that she get into counseling: kid counseling, parent counseling, and her own counseling.

She phone back six months later, saying that the fighting had accelerated and now Poppy was hitting her, scratching her, and throwing things at her. The counseling—family and individual for Poppy and for her—had not helped. The counselors were now recommending that she call the police when Poppy got assaultive.

I thought that if counseling did not work, there might be a bonding issue here. I asked her about Poppy’s birth. Why had I not thought of this before! Carmelita told the story that was a classic bonding fiasco. She was miserable throughout the pregnancy because she knew that this would tie her to her Tommy for life. His verbal assaults against her continued through the pregnancy. She was two weeks overdue, and after 24 hours of labor, she had a C-Section delivery.

She said that she never did well with drugs, and after the delivery she was totally out of it. She was groggy and sick. She couldn’t be physical with her daughter. She had to go back to work after one month. She felt bad leaving her daughter, but the

53

family needed her income. The entire first year of Poppy’s life was miserable for Carmelita. She and her husband did not get along at all.

I told her about Maternal-infant Bonding, and she said that this made a lot of sense to her. It explained how she felt differently about Poppy than about her son. She and her son were “bonded,” but she didn’t have any of those feelings with Poppy. I told her that there was someone in Portland who knew how to do this therapy, and she said that she would set up an appointment immediately. Phone calls were made, and everything was set up.

Two weeks later I got an email from the Lorena Laforest, the therapist in Portland. Lorena and I worked together in California a few years before; she knew about bonding. In a 2½ hour session, everything got repaired.

Carmelita did not phone me afterwards, nor did she return my call two months later. Did it work, I wondered. I tried again in six months, and here’s what she said.

So much has gone on that is miraculous. She’s a completely changed girl. She’s affectionate now, kissing and hugging me. No more assaults; no more negativity; no criticizing me. She’s embracing me. We hang out together. She phoned me the other day from her father’s house, saying that we need a mother-daughter weekend real soon. I looked at a picture of my children and me that was taken last week; she was leaning into me. Everything is straightened out.

54

Needless to say, the root of Poppy’s troubled feelings and behavior was that she was not connected to her mother and vice versa. And when the stressors of the divorce hit her, she did not feel loved and cared for. She naturally got angry and critical.

When extraordinary stressors hit a child who is not bonded, the child’s behaviors and emotions can tend to get more dysfunctional. She can get depressed, anxious, angry, or run amok. The difficult feelings that the child has on a regular basis get accelerated and amplified. Correcting the bonding issue allows the child to deal with the stressor better.

55

5 HYPNOSIS AND EMDR: SHORT DESCRIPTIONS

In the 1800s, a Scottish surgeon, James Esdaille, who practiced in India, discovered that if he hypnotized his patients, they did not experience any pain during surgery. These were the days before anesthesia and antibiotics. At that time, not only did most surgery patients endure horrible pain, but nearly all became infected. The mortality rate was over 50%.

Esdaille spent a considerable amount of time hypnotizing his patients, using "mesmeric passes." He had his patients lie down, and he or his assistants passed their hands a few inches over their

56

bodies, from head to toe, over and over, until they were unresponsive to pain. Sometimes this took hours.

Esdaille was thrilled with his results. His patients no longer suffered, but the most outstanding part of this story was that infection almost totally disappeared. Esdaille's patients were resistant to infections, and the mortality rate went from 50% to 5%. It appeared that when a person was hypnotized, his immune system was enhanced. This is still true. A few years ago a study confirmed this by demonstrating that T cells, the white cells that fight infection, could be increased with hypnosis.

This broad-spectrum antibiotic effect of hypnosis has a parallel in psychology. Hypnosis seems to be able to heal psychological pain resulting from traumatic events, simply and quickly. A therapist can often ask a hypnotized patient to fix the psychological injuries caused by something painful in life, without going into details. In our work, hypnosis is used to heal the traumas that existed around the birth of a baby—traumas such as separation from the baby, or sadness around the death of a parent, or the grief of divorce, or anything else so intense that it made bonding impossible.

Hypnosis is an altered state of mind in which a person can do things with intense concentration and speed. In this state of mind, suggestions can be accepted and carried out. This altered state of mind is brought about by having the person concentrate on something, such as a candle,

57

a spot, her breathing, an image, or on anything else that narrows and focuses her attention. This intense concentration allows the subconscious to be accessed. While in this state, here are some of the things that can happen:

One can remember something forgotten. Anxiety can be reduced. Old habits can be broken. Motivation can be increased. Pain can be reduced. Old painful memories can be healed. New memories can be "installed." Sleep can be enhanced. Depression can be altered. Phobias can be corrected.

The "fantastic" stories about hypnosis are also true:

Bleeding can be stopped. Incredible feats of strength can be

performed. Warts can be dissolved. Blood pressure can be lowered. Smokers can quit easily. Old childhood or infancy memories can

be retrieved.

I've witnessed most of these hypnotic feats and heard other magical hypnotic events from associates. I've seen allergies cleared up in an instant; morning sickness erased in one session; warts disappear overnight; adults remember their birth (and confirmed later by talking to their mothers); lifelong phobias disappear without much trouble.

58

I've also heard miraculous stories. A local doctor told me how his life-long allergy to mushrooms was cured in a few minutes, when he was brought back to the first time this happened and he remembered a picnic where he was terribly embarrassed by an aunt. After he discovered this, through hypnosis, he was asked if he could now eat mushrooms without throwing up. His unconscious mind said that he could; and that was it. An hour later he was eating veal scaloppini covered in mushrooms in North Beach, safely; and he never had that trouble again. Fifteen minutes of hypnosis to cure a life-long and dangerous allergy.

Dr. Joe Persinger, a former colleague at the Erickson Institute in Santa Rosa, tells the story of coming upon an accident on Highway 80, on the way to Lake Tahoe. A man with a head wound was bleeding profusely and wandering around dazed. Considering that this man was in a "trance" or altered state, Dr. Persinger went up to him, grabbed his attention, and ordered him to stop bleeding. Within a minute, the bleeding stopped.

There are different depths of hypnosis, from light to somnambulistic. Undergoing surgery without anesthesia needs a deeper state. Dr. Helen Wilbur, a psychologist at Russian River Counselors, has used hypnosis for years with surgery patients who could not use anesthesia. She hypnotizes them and talks to them while they are going through the operation. The surgeons are amazed to find that it works and that the surgery site is relatively bloodless and that they heal very quickly.

59

We use a light level of hypnosis for the work needed with Maternal-infant Bonding. In this level, people can "come out of hypnosis" at will and they frequently do not feel too different from their "waking" state. They are surprised that they can clearly remember things about the time of their child's birth. They are also surprised at the feelings that emerge as they remember and re-experience the birth.

EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a therapeutic technique discovered and developed by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. She was walking one day thinking about a topic that always bothered her; and to her surprise, by the end of the walk, it no longer bothered her. How did this happen, she wondered. She retraced the walk in her mind. Could it be that her eyes were moving across the path, back and forth, while she thought about this troubling issue? She tried it on something else—thinking about another bothersome topic while moving her eyes back and forth while she walked. Once again, the issue no longer bothered her.

She then tried it on several friends, having them watch her finger as it moved it across their field of vision and while they were thinking about something troublesome. Same results. One after another of her friends reported that they were freed from some issue that had troubled them.

Dr. Shapiro next moved into clinically disturbing areas: traumas. She found that residual emotions following traumatic experiences could be resolved in rapid fashion with this technique. It’s

60

been used successfully with PTSD resulting from accidents, rape, war memories, and other traumatic events. It has been heavily researched.

I first became interested in it when I heard an audio tape from a presentation in which a railroad engineer talked about his experience with EMDR. He said that he had run over a car stuck on a railroad track with a family trapped inside. The picture of the family about to be crushed could never get out of his mind. He tried therapy, drugs, hypnosis, all without relief. Then someone told him about EMDR, and in one session he was no longer plagued with this horrible picture.

I read a book by Joan Lovett, MD, called Small Wonders. In the forward she talked about how she was in an automobile accident and had several problems afterwards, including an intolerance of the noise when people chewed food. Nothing helped. Again, in one session of EMDR, she got better, in many areas of her life. She was so impressed with this treatment, that she changed her practice from pediatrics to behavioral pediatrics, and uses EMDR day in and day out.

We do not know why the movement of one’s eyes back and forth while thinking of something troublesome seems to work. I am sure that it works, nevertheless.

I use EMDR instead of hypnosis when hypnosis seems difficult for a person or when the mother has previous successful experience with EMDR.

61

6 CHILDREN WITH ASTHMA

The little girl described in the first chapter was the first case in which I used this type of therapy. Following that, psychologists and counselors at the Erickson Institute in Santa Rosa studied children with asthma and found a startling relationship between asthma and non-bonding. In three studies, asthmatic children were compared with children without asthma. The results were quite surprising:

80% of children with asthma were not bonded as compared to 25% of children without asthma.

Mothers of asthmatic children suffered from at least two impediments to bonding.

Separation at birth and serious emotional problems were most common.

Three clinical trials were done at Russian River Counselors, in Monte Rio, to test the

62

effectiveness of Bonding Therapy upon a child’s asthmatic symptoms. These studies were funded by the Association of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health. The results were equally surprising. 75% of the treated children improved. The improvement included:

Less daytime and nighttime wheezing Fewer missed school days Improved general health Ability to play without wheezing Fewer emergency room visits Fewer asthma-related doctor visits Reduction or elimination of medication

Most of the children in these trials got totally better. Our conclusions were:

If a child has asthma, there is a good chance that there is a bonding problem.

If there is a bonding problem, there is a good chance that it can be fixed.

If it gets fixed, there is a good chance the child's breathing will improve.

____________________________-

"The healthy twin got the asthma." Virginia and Petie

Virginia heard about our work with asthmatic children from a student at USF and made an appointment to investigate it. She had 8 year old twin boys. The older one (who ended up with asthma) was born healthy. The second one had

63

complications of birth. All of mom’s attention went to the sick baby, and the first baby, Petie, was forgotten. She remembered worrying so much about the second one, for 24 hours, that Petie was an afterthought. Petie was diagnosed with asthma at 3 years, and he now was the sick boy. He was on a full regimen of medications including courses of steroids, and he had been hospitalized twice. The first meeting was between Virginia and me, gathering history and telling her about Maternal-infant Bonding.

In the second session I met with Petie, and he was noticeably wheezing. I taught him self-hypnosis and how to relax his lungs, imagining that he was a SCUBA diver, exhaling deeply, breathing easily. The therapy helped during the sessions; but, as usual, the effects were not at all long lasting.

In the 3rd consultation, with Virginia alone, I talked to her again about Maternal-infant Bonding and suggested that we try to repair and heal the old memories through hypnosis. She recalled how scared she was at the difficult birth and how happy and relieved she was when the second child was out of danger. She looked around in her memories for Petie but could not find him anywhere. She looked at the next two weeks and still could not find him. He was, after all, healthy and not of concern.

She was asked to clear up all the fear, pain, and anguish associated with the birth. This took about two minutes, and she signaled when it was done. Then she was asked to create a new birth, with both children healthy, and her attention given to them equally, and thoroughly. When she had

64

done this, she was asked to bring these feelings up to the present. Out of hypnosis she commented on how much she had missed in the first hours and days of Petie's life.

Two weeks later, in the 4th consultation, with both Petie and Virginia present, it was clear that something was different. Petie was symptom free, and in collaboration with his pediatrician he was off all medications. Petie said that when he was worried about getting asthma, he used his SCUBA meditation and everything was fine.

I did not hear from them after that meeting and often wondered how Petie was doing. One day, ten years later, he showed up in my office, saying, “Remember me? I'm Petie, the kid who used to have asthma. It's coming back again.” He was wheezing. Here is his story:

Everything went well from that treatment. I never got asthma again. If I was worried about getting it, I'd do my SCUBA meditation, and the worry would go away. Then last week, my mom and dad took at trip to Italy; and within a day, I started wheezing. The SCUBA meditation doesn't work; and that's why I'm back.

I hypnotized him and asked his subconscious mind a few questions.

Is the asthma related to your mother's being away? “Yes.”

Look around and see if your mother is in your heart. “No.”

65

I then instructed him to bring his mother into his heart, even though she was a mere few thousand miles away. When he could accomplish this, he signaled me. His wheezing stopped. He came out of hypnosis smiling. “Now I know what to do. It felt as if my mother was dead. Now she's alive and here with me.”

_________________________

"He's still not healthy" Crystal and Bobby

Crystal was 15 years old when she got pregnant, the first time she had sex. Her boyfriend skipped town as soon as he found out. She had toxemia during her pregnancy and was quite sick for the last six months. When she showed signs of fetal distress at week 32, labor was induced and it was long and hard. When she saw and held her baby, she remembered thinking, “Oh, my God. How am I ever going to do this?”

She was discharged from the hospital and taken in by relatives, who handed her over from one to another for months, until she landed with her great aunt and uncle, in their 70s. They were very strict and religious and blamed and shamed her, feeling that she was a disgrace.

When I first saw Crystal, her baby was 8 months old, already diagnosed with asthma, using a nebulizer twice daily. A nebulizer is a machine that creates a mist out of water and medicine, in this case Theophyline, a broncho-dilator. Crystal said

66

that her baby boy got a bronchial infection when he was 4 months old and was diagnosed with asthma. She said that from the time her child was placed on medication, he had not been really healthy. He was lethargic and not at all the way he was in the beginning. She said that she “keeps on telling the doctors that the baby is not very healthy,” but they insist he is fine.

I explained Maternal-infant Bonding, its connection with asthma, and hypnosis; and she agreed to try this therapy. After she was hypnotized, the first step was to ask her to heal all the memories and feelings associated with her pregnancy: being scared, being left by her boyfriend, and the toxemia. This did not happen easily, so I broke it down into separate injuries. Now she could accomplish these tasks.

The next task involved removing the feelings from all that happened at the birth and afterwards: a painful labor and delivery, being scared when she first saw her baby, having no permanent home; her baby getting sick and being diagnosed with asthma; and her baby never fully getting healthy.

At the next meeting, she said that her baby had gotten a cold and was wheezing a lot. She was ready for the second part of the therapy: imagining a new pregnancy and birth in a joyful state, without the heartbreak and sickness. She accomplished this step by step; and when she imagined first holding her baby, she started crying. When she came out of hypnosis, she said, "I wasn't scared this time. My baby was so beautiful."

67

At the third consultation she reported that her baby was not doing well at all. His cold had gotten worse and he was using a lot more medication. I hypnotized her and asked if the old memories had returned. “NO.” Is the connection between you and your baby still intact? “Yes.” Is there some other thing that is bothering you? “Yes. I feel guilty for having sex and getting pregnant.”

I asked her to remove the guilt, but she wasn't able to do this. I reassured her that her baby was the beautiful result of this act. She still couldn't do it. I reached down deep into Christian theology and told her that there was no need for guilt because Christ died for her sins. That did it. Now she was able to remove the guilt.

She came out of the hypnosis saying, “Boy, do I ever feel better.” And she looked better as well.

Two weeks later, at a follow-up session, her son was symptom free. Her doctor had reluctantly removed him from all medications. A month later Crystal reported that her baby was finally healthy and normal. She was no longer fearful that her baby would die, and she was no longer lugging around the heavy nebulizer. Nine months later, her son was still healthy, symptom free, and full of life.

___________________________________

"No one knows what's wrong with him." Janey and Kevin

68

Fifteen month old Kevin was a complex case. He wheezed and coughed every day and every night, and asthma medication did not seem to work. Thinking he might have cystic fibrosis, he was sent to the University of California medical center in San Francisco to be tested. The results were negative, and now the doctors really did not know what to do. His mother was at her wit's end. She ended up at my office.

Janey told me about how Kevin was born. He came at a time that she was homeless, without a mate, and at-odds with her family. Knowing this, we began the treatment. She went into hypnosis very easily and cleaned up her pregnancy and birth and then installed a better memory. It was quick work.

At the next session, Janey said that Kevin slept the night through, every single night, since our last session. This was the first time since he got sick, several months ago. He had also stopped wheezing and coughing; and he was feeling active and healthy.

I hypnotized her to see if anything still bothered her. “Yes,” she said, “the baby's father.” I had her connect strongly with her baby—the Golden Cord connecting their hearts—and put the father into perspective. He was over there to the side, smaller, not occupying any space in her heart. She was able to do this.

At the next session, two months later, everything was intact and her baby was still

69

symptom free. Four months later, Janey called to say that her baby was sick again, on asthma medication, awakening often in the night, and miserable. I asked her to come in. Here's what she said:

I went back to Oregon to see my family. I keep forgetting that I left Oregon when I was 16 to get away from them. But they sounded so sweet and wanted to see the baby, that I thought maybe they had changed. When I got there, they were horrible. They criticized me for being a bad mother; they were disrespectful; they were mean. I haven't been the same since; and Kevin got sick as soon as we got there.

I asked Janey to close her eyes and go inside, getting close to her inner wisdom. I asked her if the Golden Cord between her and Kevin had been ruptured. Of course, the was the answer. Well then, I said, re-establish your connection with him. This must be guarded very carefully, I reminded her. After she came out of hypnosis, she said, “I think that I have to protect myself and Kevin from my parents in the future. My parents are destructive.”

Six months later, her parents were coming to visit her. She made an appointment to prepare herself. The consultation took 15 minutes. I told her to remember the Golden Cord and keep it safe. Nothing and no one should tamper with that cord. She contacted me after the visit and said that she did well and Kevin was healthy. Everything was intact.

70

_________________________________

"But I'm already over that grief." Tama and Sammy

Tama was a patient that I saw once or twice a year about her stuff and her family. At one appointment, she said that she had to leave early because her son was having asthma problems. I asked her what happened before Sammy was born. She said that her first baby had died of Crib Death four months before she got pregnant with Sammy. I told her about the connection between asthma and Maternal-infant Bonding and asked if she wanted to try this therapy in the 1/2 hour that we had remaining in our session. She agreed and we began.

Because she had been hypnotized before, she went into hypnosis quickly and I told her to remove all the sadness of her first baby's death. She said, "But I'm already over that grief. It's been 9 years."

I continued.

Bring that experience of no-grief back to the time you conceived Sammy, and go through that entire pregnancy—this time joyfully. Prepare for his birth with a joyful heart; feel his movements, talk to him (she began to smile). Now, let me know when he's ready to be born. . . . And now they place him on your chest (she started crying).

71

After a short while, she was asked to bring this beginning through different stages, up to the present time, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. With him healthy and with her joyful.

After the hypnosis, she said, "Even though I am free from the sadness now, it's clear that I was severely grieving when I was pregnant with Sammy. There was no room in me for paying full attention to him. I was greatly preoccupied."

That meeting was on a Friday. She phoned on Monday. "I would have phoned Saturday, but the office was closed. His asthma is gone! I'm looking out my front window at him playing soccer, for the first time in his life!"

She phoned back four months later to say that he had asthma again. I asked her what happened; she did not know. I asked her to come in. At that appointment, I asked her to think carefully about what had happened just before he got asthma.

She knew immediately. She was having an argument with Sammy about cleaning up his room, and she said, "You'll miss me when I'm dead." He started wheezing within an hour.

I told her to go home and apologize to him and reassure Sammy that she was healthy and not going to die an early death. She phoned back the next day to report that Sammy's asthma was gone.

A new bond is fragile and can be broken, but it can be repaired quite easily.

72

______________________________

"I thought I WAS bonded." Frances and Little Franny

Little Franny got asthma when she was 4, during the weekend that her mother, Frances, left her husband. They had been having marital problems for several years; and she had fallen in love with an old high school boyfriend. When she decided to leave her husband and move in with her new love, little Franny was rushed to the hospital that weekend. Since then the little girl was constantly medicated.

I spoke with her about the connection between Maternal-infant Bonding and asthma. I asked her about her daughter's pregnancy, birth, and infancy. No signs of any impediment. In reporting about Little Franny's birth, she beamed, remembering how beautiful her baby was. They were bonded for sure. Perhaps this was a case of a bond that was broken later.

I hypnotized her and asked her to go from the birth, day by day, up to the moment when her connection was interrupted. She started frowning; and then she cried, "When I fell in love with my old high school boy friend and left Franny's father. That's when. I felt so crazy and so guilty."

I asked her to remove the guilt, a big order for so simple a request. It was hard to accomplish. I brought her out of hypnosis to talk. She said that

73

she wished she had never done this; the new relationship lasted for just a few months. By that time Little Franny was very sick. When she re-united with Franny's father, it didn't make Franny better, and the marriage was still impaired. They broke up for good when Little Franny was 8, and her asthma was a way of life by then.

I asked her to return to hypnosis. Now, with all this being said, it was finally time to be done with all of her guilt. She did not deserve it, and neither did her daughter. She could remember whatever lessons were there for her, but the time had come for an end to this unproductive and destructive guilt. No more of it.

With this encouragement, she was able to let go of the guilt. Her next task was to re-establish the original bond. She was asked to return to Little Franny's birth, feel it, and bring that feeling year by year to the present time. When she came out of hypnosis she reported that she had not realized how much guilt she carried for those years.

At her next appointment, a week later, Frances said that Little Franny and she were remarkably warm to each other ever since the "rebond." She marked that she had forgotten what that felt like. "And, by the way, she's stopped wheezing." Three years later, I happened to see Frances at a ballgame, and she said that Little Franny never had any more trouble with asthma.

_____________________________

74

"I'm your textbook case." Elizabeth and Poppy

A friend of mine referred Elizabeth and Poppy to me to see if there was anything I could do about Poppy's serious asthmatic condition and overall poor health. My friend remarked that Poppy was always sick, always missing school, always unable to play. She remarked that when Poppy was not down with asthma, she still did not look well. "She's so sickly; she looks like a wilted flower. Never, ever, looks healthy."

I met with Elizabeth and spoke with her about our theories regarding asthma and bonding, and she declared, “I'm your textbook case.” She then told the story about her pregnancy and Poppy's birth. Poppy was her second child. During the pregnancy, her husband was using drugs and alcohol and was running around on her with her sister. She suspected that this was happening, but he denied it and got mad at her for thinking such thoughts. The birth was OK, but Elizabeth remembered thinking, when she first held the baby, "Baby, you are stepping into a big, stinky mess." She was clearly preoccupied with her marital problems.

She was released from the hospital much sooner than she wanted; but since she was a welfare patient, they scooted her out as quickly as they could. She argued with them that she was not ready, but it made no difference to them. She went home to a house that was empty; no visits from family. Her husband was away all the time. She was exhausted and had to take care of her new baby and the older toddler. Poppy would not sleep and

75

cried excessively. Elizabeth did not have enough time or energy to attend to her older child and her baby.

Her husband did not help at all. When he was home, they fought. They broke up and re-united twice in the ensuing nine months. Finally, they separated for good. By then, Poppy was experiencing respiratory problems and was heavily medicated. By the time they consulted with me, Poppy was seven years old and she was on several medications and was hospitalized a number of times. She was thinking that she was always going to be sick. Also she was depressed.

At that first session, I hypnotized Elizabeth to show her what it was like. I told her that this was fixable, and she could start healing those old, terrible wounds. She awoke with a smile on her face, saying that this was the first touch of hope that she had in many years.

At the second session, she remarked that Poppy was very sick with a cold and the doctor had increased her medications. I told her that we would compare this condition now with how she will be doing after the treatment was complete.

In hypnosis she was asked to clear up the events of her pregnancy with Poppy. Each of these was taken event by event. It took a lot of wrestling to clear the trauma related to her husband, since there were intense unresolved issues and feelings. Hypnosis is a great method to resolve long-standing problems. We proceeded like this.

76

Are you willing to let go of him? No. Go back to in time to the moment you became unwilling to let go of him. She went back to their wedding at St. Peter and Paul's Church in San Francisco, with lots of people attending, when she was 18 years old and they were both so beautiful. Her uncle was the priest! Married for life. Now she was being asked to let go of him.

She cried.

I told her that this was all for a good reason, and for the health of her daughter she had to let him go. For the good of her own heart as well. I told her that her anger was just her attempt to keep him. But God writes straight with crooked lines. Look at this from a higher plane and ask God to help you. She responded, “I can let him go now.”

Next, she needed to clear up the residue about the hospital, also a difficult task. She had current, ongoing anger at the dehumanizing, brutal way they dealt with her. This anger was justified but no longer benefiting her. Did she wish to keep the lesson and let the anger go? She could keep the moral indignation, and never lose the sense of right and wrong, her social consciousness. She could let go of the part that was no longer working for her. She responded, “Yes, I want to do that.”

And she did it. The look in her face was peaceful and beautiful.

Two days later, at the next appointment, she reported that Poppy had not improved. I reminded

77

her that we were not yet done. She said, however, that she herself was improved, feeling much lighter, more joyful. I told her that it was time to finish mopping up and then get working on bonding. She quickly went back to work, clearing up the thoughts when she first held Poppy. . . . “Done.” The memory of the feelings when she went home and had no help. . . . “Done.” The trouble with her husband. . . . “Easily done!” And now the terrible feelings about all of Poppy's illnesses. . . . “Done.” She cried as she accomplished these enormous tasks. Now she was ready to change Poppy's birth.

The instructions were simple, since she could do so much in a hypnotic state.

Elizabeth, see what it's like now for you to be pregnant with Poppy with no worries, with nothing to think about except Poppy. Her smile registered that she could do this well. . . . Now Poppy will be born and you can be with her now. Her tears and beatific countenance indicated that she was doing well.

The baby stays with you, Elizabeth, and you'll stay in the hospital as long as you like. Now you'll be going home and you'll be taken care of so you can be with Poppy as much as you want. More smiles. Take his joyful beginning up though 2 years of age. Again, smooth sailing. And up to right now.

She came out of hypnosis, looking quite different. She said, "Now, that's how it should have been."

78

In four days she returned and said that two things were different. Poppy was snuggling with her, for the first time since she was an toddler. Second, she was no longer wheezing, and she was sleeping all through the night. As an afterthought, she added that Poppy was more energetic and "lighter."

Six months later Elizabeth phoned to say that Poppy was doing so well and their lives had changed dramatically because she no longer had to worry about her daughter. And she was so delighted to see her happy and healthy all the time. My friend, who referred them to me, reported that Poppy was a changed kid—energetic, happy, healthy, glowing. Night and day.

______________________________

"My life went down the toilet." Sam and Melissa

This six year old boy had his first asthma attack when he was one year old. He was allergic to cats, dogs, springtime pollens, and dust. He was on Beconase AQ, nasal spray, and Flovent, which he hadn’t needed to use in a while. In the last six months, he had two episodes of wheezing which lasted several days.

The mother’s life "went down the toilet," she said, in her fourth month of pregnancy with this her first child. The father of the boy left, her job was terminated, she had no place to live, and she was plummeted into poverty. She reported that this

79

was the lowest time in her life, and she had counseling from this time until after her son was born. She went on welfare and rented a room from someone she didn’t know.

When her baby was born, she reported feeling “fantastic, touched, moved to tears of joy, elated.” It seemed from this response that she was bonded with her child, and this was confirmed in hypnosis. However the bond was disrupted at one year, when she moved in with a man who “rescued” her from poverty. It was an old boyfriend, and she agreed to his offer against her better judgment. She was coerced into a sexual relationship with him; and on the first weekend of this relationship, her son went to the emergency room with his first asthma attack. It seemed evident that in her powerful, conflicted feelings she lost her connection with her son.

In the first session, using EMDR, the mother was able to release the emotional pain associated with the father’s desertion, her loss of security, and the residual fear.

She reported in the second session that she felt easier about her son’s weekend visit with his father. She then worked on letting go of some of the feelings associated with the painful relationship with the man who took her into his home when the child had his first asthma attack.

At the third session she reported that her son stayed home from school for two days with a bad cold and asthma. She also stated that she went to

80

look at the house where she lived with her “rescuer” but did not feel anguished as before.

At the fourth session she spoke more about her pregnancy and life with her “rescuer,” making some sense out of it and understanding her feelings more clearly. Using EMDR, she worked through the remaining portions of this period.

In the fifth session she reported that she talked to her mother about the “rescuer” issues without feeling guilty or painful. Her son went on a week’s vacation with his father without needing to use his medications, which was unusual. Using EMDR, a final effort was made to process the residual pain, and then a new story was created starting from her pregnancy to the present time, emphasizing those parts of her and her son’s story that needed revision.

After two weeks, she reported that her son used his inhaler as a precaution only when he had a cold, had not needed his nasal spray, and was not experiencing shortness of breath upon exercising. She stated that his health was excellent.

One month from that session Melissa reported that there were no episodes of wheezing, no shortness of breath upon exercising, no use of any medications, and his health and activity level were “excellent.”

Six months later, I saw the mother at a pasta and crab feed in our small town. She reported that her son’s health had been wonderful, that he was energetic, that he had only use his inhaler once in

81

six months, as a precaution. He was off all other medications.

82

7 BONDING FROM THE GET-GO AND MORNING SICKNESS

Mothers go through many hormonal changes in the initial stages of pregnancy; and morning sickness is a common, ordinary experience. When it lasts too long or is too violent, expectant mothers have sought help with hypnosis. These mothers are frequently experiencing conflicting or disrupting feelings, often without consciously realizing it. Once these feelings are discovered and resolved, the mothers are able to devote their undivided minds and hearts to their babies. They are able to bond to their new baby-in-the-womb. Most of the time, it only takes one or two appointments.

83

"I wasn't sick last time." Theresa

Theresa came with her husband to her first appointment. She was a healthy 30 year old woman, in the 4th month of pregnancy, surprised that she was so sick. She was pregnant once before and was not sick at all, although she miscarried in the 4th month.

She said that this time they had not told anyone about being pregnant because they were worried about losing this child and disappointing everyone. She said that losing her first child was very hard on both of them and they wanted to get pregnant right away to get over their grief. She was so surprised that she was so sick because she had very little morning sickness last time. Now she had morning sickness, morning, afternoon, and evening. In fact she was very nauseous during our meeting. Her doctor was ready to confine her to bed rest, but they thought maybe a psychologist could help.

I explained hypnosis to her, and we began.

Is your inner mind willing to help? Yes. Is there something bothering you? Yes. Go to what it is and bring it to the surface and tell me about it.

She started crying. I'm afraid I'm going to lose this baby, too.

I asked her to talk to the baby and ask how it was doing. Everything OK?

The mother responded: Yes. She's just fine. She says to stop worrying.

84

Can you stop being afraid now? Yes. Any reason for the morning sickness now? No.

She came out of hypnosis with a joyful, relieved look. “My baby jumped for the first time ever as we spoke. I know it's a girl and that she's fine. I'm not ill right now! The nausea is gone.”

Her stomach remained comfortable for the remainder of her pregnancy. She delivered a healthy, happy, bonded baby girl.

___________________________________

"I'm afraid of being a mother." Ursula

A psychologist colleague sought consultation because she was having a very difficult pregnancy. She knew about hypnosis and had, in fact, used it with her own clients. I asked her why she thought she was so ill. She said:

My mother was a horrible mother, abusive verbally and physically to all five of her children. If it were now, she'd be hauled-in by the authorities. This is my first pregnancy, and I want to have this baby. But I am deathly afraid that I'll be a bad mother just like her. I can't get over this worry, and it feels like the only thing I can think about. I am possessed with this fear.

85

She didn't need any education about hypnosis, so we went right to work. Is your fear about being a bad mother making you sick? Yes. Is there anything else? No.

Now the job was to get her to realize that she was not doomed to act like her mother. Since she was a psychologist, she could be expected to do the majority of the work herself, in hypnosis. I asked her to see a split screen TV and on the right side was her mother and she was on the left side. She should study them both very carefully as a psychologist would. She should let me know when she was done.

Is there any reason for you to think you'll turn out like your mother? No. Can you stop worrying about this? Yes, I can. Can you stop being sick? Yes. I'm OK now. So talk to your baby.

When she came out of hypnosis she said that the realization occurred to her that she was in no way like her mother nor was there a chance that she'd turn into her mother, ever. She immediately stopped being terrified, and just as quickly she felt better. No more nausea.

I felt my baby get happy when I realized this. I could talk to her. It's easy now for me to be with my baby.

86

"I'm sick as a dog and no one knows why." Lucy

Lucy was a 27 year old woman, married for three years, in the 5th month of pregnancy, and had morning sickness all day long. The doctor was ready to put her to bed until she delivered, if she didn't improve. She said that she vomited several times a day and had an upset stomach constantly. She lost 15 pounds, had a sallow complexion, and claimed that she was miserable.

I asked her why she thought she was so sick.

I'm as sick as a dog and I don't know why. I've tried everything that could help: soda crackers, ginger ale, non-spicy foods, cream of wheat, taking it easy, taking naps during the day, and nothing works. My husband and I want this baby.

I told her that hypnosis might be able to help. Sometimes it's necessary to know the cause of the nausea; sometimes not. She agreed to be hypnotized.

Is there some psychological reason behind this nausea? Yes. Do you need to know what it is? Yes. Then go to the reason for this and when you are there, you can bring it up to consciousness.

She started crying, heaving in sorrow.

87

I had an abortion when I was 16 years old. I didn't think it bothered me. Now I know that it did. I'm so sorry and sad about this.

I said to her: “Well, Lucy, it's time to get all that grief out. Listen carefully to what you hear inside.”

She heard:

My first baby is still here. She's not upset with me. Her soul will be with me and my new baby forever. She loves me. She told me I can love my new baby. There is no more grief. I can be well now.

Lucy came out of hypnosis with a settled stomach. She said that she had never thought that the abortion bothered her. The doctor told her that it was just like a growth that needed to be removed. Nothing more. She was just a young kid; her parents were strongly in favor of the abortion. She felt like she was railroaded into it; but she did not let it bother her. She hardly ever thought about it. Now, she already felt a great relief. She said that there was no question that the first baby was a girl and that her new baby was also a girl.

She wrote me a letter two weeks later, saying that on the way home she had a craving for pepperoni pizza and has been just fine ever since. The baby was moving around happily, and she was able to talk to her new baby now, quite joyfully.

88

“I can’t help it; it runs in the family.” Juliana

When Julie came in to the office, she looked like she was being forced into this consultation. She said that it really wasn’t her idea but her OB-GYN recommended it but she knew it wouldn’t work. She wanted to be loyal to her doctor, so she kept the appointment.

Here is her story:

Everyone in our family has nausea throughout their pregnancies. It’s a Sicilian thing. My mother was that way all through seven of her pregnancies. I am the oldest and I watched it happen all the time. She carried a bucket around with her day and night. I even helped her with the bucket, when she had her hands full with kids. There’s no escaping it. My mother’s sisters were that way, and her mother was that way. Probably all the way back to The Old Country.

So I asked her if we could explore this with hypnosis, and she agreed. She was easily hypnotized as I knew she would be, because she was already operating under a post-hypnotic suggestion that this was the only way that her family handled a pregnancy. When she was hypnotized I talked to her.

I wonder how old you were when you first got this idea that women in your family had to be sick throughout their pregnancy.

89

Could you tell me when you first got this idea? “I was 3.” So I want to talk to that little three year old girl. Juliana, do you remember the story about your grandmother being sick when she was pregnant? Was she coming over on the boat? “Yes.” Well, now that makes sense. She was sea sick, not morning sick. She got it confused and told everyone in the family that they would be sick when they were pregnant. And because everyone loved her and believed her, they all had it stick in their minds. It’s not true that everyone needs to be sick. You don’t have to be sick when you get pregnant. “ How do you know,” she asked. Because I’m a doctor. And I’m Sicilian. And I know about sea sickness because all my family were fishermen. So now when you get pregnant, when you get older, you don’t have to be sick. Is that OK? “Yes.”

Then I asked her to return in hypnosis to her adult state and I repeated everything that I learned and all the suggestions that she need to hear. I got agreement from her unconscious mind that this was a crossed-wire in her little 3 year old brain, and it did not need to short-out any more. The origin of this family legend was now uncovered, and she could have a healthy pregnancy. She agreed to this.

When she came out of hypnosis, she was smiling. She was no longer feeling nauseous, and she said that she could feel her baby and she talked to the baby. She said the baby told her that what I said is true and she should be healthy and happy.

90

It all made sense to her. Her grandmother was sea sick, and she got it confused with morning sickness and thought that she was doomed to morning sickness throughout her pregnancy. She passed on this family legend to her daughters, and they to their daughters. That erroneous legend could be put to rest.

She wrote several months later telling me that her pregnancy was perfect from that time on. She said that she told her sisters about this consultation and they were greatly relieved. She even told her Sicilian mother who said, in response, “What does he know.”

91

8 ADOPTED CHILDREN

You would think that all adopted kids are unbonded, but that isn't the situation. Adopted children indeed can be bonded to their new mothers. The chances are lower that it will happen, but there is no question in my mind that bonding happens here.

_______________________________

"We couldn't be closer" Darcy and Lindsey

Lindsey wanted a child but couldn't get pregnant. She and her husband adopted little Darcy at birth. They met many times with the mother who was in her 20s. She had two other children and wasn't prepared to have another child. Lindsey liked her and spent time with her.

Lindsey and her husband prepared for their new child, buying clothes, arranging the house, having baby showers. At the birth, the baby was given to Lindsey. They stayed in the hospital

92

overnight, then they went home as a family. From the beginning, Lindsey and Darcy were inseparable, affectionate, interlocking, in love with each other. A doctor friend of hers told her to spend a lot of time with skin-to-skin contact. It worked. "We couldn't be closer," said mom. It has been that way until this day; Darcy is now 18.

____________________________

"Love at first sight" Heather, Beth, and Momma Mia

Mia had it both ways. Her first adopted daughter, Heather, was planned and expected. Mom and dad painted her room. Dad was a carpenter and made lots of the furniture himself. They bought clothes, arranged for god parents, and both set of grandparents were excited about their new grandchild. When she arrived, she bonded with mom, dad, and everyone, but especially with Momma Mia. She had prepared a place for her daughter in her heart, and it was love at first sight.

Three years later on a rainy Friday afternoon, Mia was called by the adoption agency . They had a little boy from the same mom. He was arriving right now. Did Mia and her husband want him? "Of course," they said. They set arrangements in motion, but it was too much for them. A pregnant place had not been prepared in Mia's heart, and she did not bond with this baby. She knew it right away. It felt different from the very beginning. Was it her fault? No. But she

93

didn't know it; and she kept it buried in her heart for years.

________________________________

"This child is from a different planet" Jimmy and Gloria and Little Alex

Alex was adopted at birth by Gloria and Jim. He arrived totally unexpectedly on her birthday and she had not prepared herself at all for this baby. She said that she was shocked by the news that there was a baby to adopt.

Gloria said that she felt a problem from the beginning. She couldn't connect with him; and he didn't seem to want to connect either. In fact, he would lean away from her when she held him. However, within eight weeks, she started connecting with him better.

Then her mother-in-law came to visit and took over full care of the baby. She did everything for him and left no room for Gloria. Grandma became the "super mom," and from that point on he no longer interacted with Gloria. That was the break in their fragile bonding, and from that point they never reconnected.

In therapy, Gloria processed the trauma of the surprise birth very well. She healed the shock of getting a baby without preparation. She healed the pain for the lack of connection. She healed the visit from her mother-in-law and the break in her early connection with Alex.

94

She was asked to create a new beginning for Alex and herself. After five minutes, she came out of hypnosis and said:

I met his birth mother and talked with her. She told me she couldn't keep him and asked if I would take care of him. I immediately felt pregnant. I was joyful. When she went into labor, I went into labor. She delivered and I did, too. I bonded with him. I felt he was my baby. And then I grew him up, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually. I let him nurse. He tied together a type of sacred triangle, an exchange.

I did it a second time without the birth mother. I felt it more deeply. I brought it up to his being one month old. We were wonderfully tight. My mother-in-law couldn't break us apart. Since I'm breast feeding, she can't do that.

I have a clear picture and feeling of what it would be like—happy. He prefers me over anyone else. He was a little plug looking for an outlet.

She went home and continued the process. Two weeks later she phoned.

I feel good. The pregnancy is clean. He's 18 months old now; I've got baby pictures in my wallet. Eight hours old. I drive around with them. So sweet. It's like falling in love. This has opened a face track for me.

95

A month later she reported that he didn't seem to be playing as many interpersonal games as before. Not so weasely. He had been really sweet for longer periods of time, and she had more patience with him.

The bonding was completed and now they had a foundation for a mother-son relationship.

96

9 UNBONDED ADULTS

When un-bonded mothers of grown children hear about Maternal-infant Bonding, they are frequently relieved. Now they know why there was a problem. Now they can be freed from the guilt they have felt for so long. Now they know it wasn't their fault.

The stories are astoundingly clear: a mother was unconscious at her child’s birth; another was crazed by her husband's affair; another was grieving for her father who just died. They could not connect with their babies, and the effects were felt for a long time.

________________________________

"We're like oil and water." Rosemarie and Rosie

Rosemarie was in a counseling class that I taught at USF. When she heard about bonding and

97

typical impediments, she exclaimed that she most likely did not bond with her oldest daughter, Rosie, who was 20. "Now there was a situation!" she said.

Labor came on so quickly that my husband didn't have time to come home from work, so my neighbor drove me to the hospital. It was night time and storming. My neighbor got freaked and swerved off the road, and the car rolled and landed on its roof. The ambulance came and rushed us to the hospital. I delivered in the emergency room and wasn't even sure who my baby was. I was so traumatized. They were pulling glass out of my scalp for days. When I finally got my daughter later the next day, it was such a disappointment. I was still in pain and doped up. I felt like I'd been robbed of something. I didn't even get to nurse her because of the medications I was taking.

She described her relationship with Rosie as continuously difficult. Rosie was always critical of her, and she was always mad at Rosie. They barely could exist in the same house; and Rosie was now 20, living at home, and going to college. Rosie was a good kid, she said, and everyone liked her. But she and Rosie were like oil and water. Now it made sense to her why this was the case. Neither one of them was at fault.

She was willing to work on her bonding problem with Rosie. It was quite easy to do.

Clean up the accident--the feelings and memories of those feelings. Clean up the

98

hard feelings that you've had for 20 years. “Done.” Ready for a new birth? “Yes.”

Now, Rosemarie, is there any problem from the pregnancy? “No.” So remember your pregnancy carefully, and this time you and your husband go to the hospital. . . . You have a quick labor. . . When your baby takes her first breath, let me know. “Now.”

Your baby is placed on your chest and you are quiet there for a while. . . . Now your baby starts nursing. . . . (Rosemarie started crying.) After a while, you both go into a deep sleep and dream about each other. . . . You awake and she is with you there in bed. . . . You look at each other. . . . She nurses. . . . Now bring this beginning up to one full day. . . . One week. . . . Now bring it up to one year. . . .See what life is like with her at 3 years of age. . . . 7 years. . . . Right up to today.

Will your inner mind take this beginning, like a seed, and let it grow? “Yes.” Letting it influence your life now? “Yes.”

She came out of hypnosis, very solemn.

That was important. I never had a beginning with her. No sweet moments. Now I have some cherished thoughts and feelings from the beginning.

One month later, at her next appointment, she said that there were definite changes she was

99

noticing. Subtle, but clearly different. Rosie wasn't as snappy, and neither was she. When Rosie was now dissatisfied with something, mom did not take it personally. She could now have patience and put things into perspective. She said that she just kept the new birth in mind. It was easy to do. Rosie was calling her “mom,” in a different way, a sweet way.

Last week, she said, something extraordinary happened. Rosemarie always made Rosie a bag lunch for school, and Rosie came back, into the kitchen after leaving and said, "Mom, thanks for these lunches. I love you." Rosemarie said that it was the first time Rosie had said those cherished words since she was very little.

________________________________

"He won't leave." Phyllis and Marty

I heard about Phyllis from a friend of mine who worked with her. Phyllis was complaining about her son who would not leave home. He was 35 years old. I asked my friend to find out about the boy's birth.

Phyllis had three children. The two older boys had joyous births. Everything was perfect. Then she had two miscarriages a year before she conceived Marty. She hadn't recovered from those miscarriages when she got pregnant with Marty.

On top of this, her husband completely turned away from him the moment he was born because he wasn't a girl. He was enormously upset, and did not even want to see him. Phyllis was so

100

bothered by all of this that she had no memory of Marty’s birth. Her first memory was on the road home from the hospital, when her husband hit a deer.

She was very upset. She lost lots of weight. The doctor said she had postpartum depression, and she was put on antidepressants, which did not work. After a month, her husband phoned her sister to come and get her.

Marty never left home, in his teens, his twenties, and now in his thirties. He could not get away from her. When he left town for a few days, he would phone daily. He was 35 years old now, and he didn't even date much, although he was very good looking.

Phyllis felt that she was a terrible mother, but not with her other sons, for whom she had deep feelings. She had no maternal feelings for Marty. She wanted them, and she felt horrible about this.

She came to see me and told me this story. She was hypnotized and asked to clear out the terrible feelings and memories surrounding the miscarriages, birth, and weeks following it. Then she cleared out all the guilt and the feelings of being a terrible mother. This was quite emotional, but in seven minutes she was done.

She was asked to imagine how it could have been, should have been. After five minutes she was asked to bring those feelings up to the present. In a few minutes she came out of hypnosis saying that it

101

felt different—more joyous. I told her to go home and take care of herself as if she just had a baby.

Three weeks later, she returned for her follow-up meeting. She reported:

It's as if I have a memory of Marty's birth which is comforting to me. I felt all fuzzy inside. Soft. (She cries here.) It's a strange space.

I baked him a birthday cake. He was clearly touched. Then the next day he got angry with me for everything. Finally I said, "You must not talk to me that way." Then it seemed to dissipate. He came back; and we've had the sweetest time together. We've been doing things together in the garden. I've gotten a sense of what it was like for him as a little boy. We've been in such a good space since then.

I got a note from Phyllis a year later. She wrote: "My son has been in Portland, Oregon, for the last year. He is dating. Hopefully, he is building a life there." My friend, who worked with her, reported a year after that, that he was married.

___________________________________

"Pearl Harbor ruined my life." Trina

When explaining Maternal-infant Bonding to classes I teach, I always get a few students who say that they have had problems with their mothers

102

and now they know why. One such student was Trina who was born a week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her father was in the service and was rushed into the war right away. Her mother was frightened sick, and she always reflected on Trina’s birth as the most horrible time in her life.

She had never felt close to her mother and always felt that her mother was incapable of loving her. Now she knew why. She had two brothers who were born after the war and were close to her mother. She envied their relationship. She and her mother got along better when she became an adult, and they now had a cordial relationship. The tell-tale words indicating a failure to bond came out, "We became friends."

She volunteered to repair the bond in class, as a demonstration. We started.

Trina, clear up all that trauma surrounding your birth. What ever feelings were carried by you all your life; your feelings and your mother's feelings as well. “Done.” Now clear up the difficult childhood feelings. All the therapy that you have done and all you know from psychology can help here. “Done.”

Is there anything else that needs to be done before you can create a new birth? “Yes. I need to forgive my mother. It wasn't her fault.” Do it, then. “Done.”

Now, Trina, go back to being in your mother's womb, without any turmoil--no

103

fear, now worrying, just joy. First trimester. . . . “Done.” Second trimester. You hear your mother talk; you feel her heartbeat. “Done.” Now up to the time you are ready to be born. Your mother is waiting for this moment, with excitement. When you take your first breath. . . . “Done.” Now you are placed on your mother's chest, you look at each other and you know her and she knows you. We then took her new birth from the first hour, incrementally, to the present day . . . . “Done.”

Out of hypnosis, Trina remarked that now she had a new feeling, not previously experienced. It was wonderful. Now she could understand how mothers and children ought to feel.

The following week, Trina reported in class that she felt quite different all week. More secure and solid. She said that her mother phoned during the week and told her that she was thinking about her lately, quite a lot actually. She decided to phone when she found herself walking around the house fingering the hospital wrist-band that Trina had when she was born. "What's going on over there in California," her mother asked.

Fifteen years later, I saw Trina in town and she reported that her relationship with her mother had never been better.

________________________________

"I’m not an adequate mother. " Alexis and Gina

104

Gina heard about Maternal-infant Bonding and visited me to ask if we could work on bonding wither 30 year old daughter, Alexis. Although she loved Alexis, there were problems all through their lives. Alexis always had an edge to her when dealing with her mother.

Gina said that her doctor wasn't there for the delivery. A strange doctor came in and he had a horrible attitude. The baby was breach, and labor was very hard. The baby turned and turned. Eventually a C-Section was done, and she saw them cut her open. She couldn't move; she was helpless.

Alexis was beautiful. She looked at her mother directly in the eyes. Then they put eye drops in, and she screamed. She was handed to her pediatrician and put in an incubator. Gina went to sleep and did not see her baby again for 8 hours.

When Gina was given her baby, she was in extreme pain. Alexis was handed to her mother, and she went stiff. It was not good from the very beginning.

She was a very difficult baby. She cried a lot. She cried every night at 6 PM for months and months. She fell asleep late and awoke early. She was a handful. It took Gina two months to recover from the C-Section.

Gina said that she never felt like an adequate mother. She always blamed herself for issues between them. She knows that she was a good mother. But it just did not feel right. She was depressed for several years after Alexis' birth.

105

The difficult birth was cleaned up with EMDR. A new one was imagined and installed in the same session.

Next session Gina reported that there was a noticeable difference this weekend. Alexis usually gets upset when her mother cannot talk for long on the phone. This time she said, "It's OK, mom. Thanks." Gina said that she—mom—was not torn or distracted by guilt.

She spent a weekend with Alexis and there was a tangible softening, a letting go of small things. The edge was gone. Alexis said, "I love being alone with you." Big change.

Gina and dad visited her another time and stayed for an hour. "Alexis could not have expressed enough appreciation for our visit," mom reports. She also noticed a completely different attitude whenever the daughter now phoned.

Six months later I saw Gina in town and she reported that it still was wonderful. She noticed that she wasn't getting upset with her daughter as she used to. She found herself not taking issue with everything. Instead, she felt that she was loving her daughter more and being more understanding.

Two years later, Gina came back home to stay with her parents while she was going to graduate school. She described this time as beautiful for each of them. They love doing things together, even being "gym buddies" six days a week. Gina commented how much they love each other as compared to how difficult it was growing up.

106

107

10 CASES FROM THE FILES OF SISTER XAVIER MCPHEE

Sister Xavier McPhee was an Ursuline nun and a Marriage and Family Therapist. She had been working in the area of Maternal-infant Bonding as long as I, and we have consulted with each other for 30 years. I asked her to present a few of her cases for this book. Here are the cases, in her words.

108

"Uncooperative Lilly" Martha and Lilly

Lilly was nine and a half years old when we met for the first time. She came to my office at Erickson Institute with her mother, Martha, with whom I had already had a brief interview. I knew that Lilly had been adopted by the family when she was two and a half years old and that she "had rages" and "threw fits" when denied something she had set her heart on having. This behavior was common on the playground at school as well as in her own home. She had seen several therapists who had, one by one, ended the sessions when it appeared that Lilly had changed her "game" and was ready to cooperate with her parents and teachers. The "cooperation" did not last, however, and the "rages" continued.

Lilly became engaged in a struggle with her father, which sometime became physical, as he restrained her from hurting someone or throwing things around the house. Martha spoke of putting her in "another home" which would "be safer" in case she ran away. About that time I sensed that Lilly could have been molested when living with her biological mother. (This supposition was underscored by the fact that Lilly had been found playing with a male doll which she had placed on top of her female rag doll on her bed.)

Her "rages" with her adoptive father grew more frequent and more violent than those to which she subjected Martha. Then someone suggested the word "dyslexia," and Lilly's happier hour had come. Testing was administered at the Dyslexia Center in Santa Rosa. She was given a tutor, and within

109

days, her latent artistic giftedness was being developed into miniature clay animals: elephants, angels, frogs. Lilly's reading scores improved.

I began to use hypnosis with Lilly, teaching her how to access her "inner mind" and to let go of memories that were painful and hurtful. About that time, her parents were planning a Caribbean cruise and Martha was fearful because Lilly was to spend the week of the cruise with a neighbor who had a daughter Lilly's age. The girls were friends.

"Martha, do you have a piece of clothing that Lilly really likes to borrow, something that she loves to wear?"

"The red shirt of course."

"Bring it to your session next week." It was done. The bonding had begun—though neither Martha nor Lilly knew it. The red shirt was a transitional object. Lilly would wear it or use it for a pillow when she missed her mother during that cruise time.

Martha returned from the cruise rested and refreshed, mother-hungry. The time for maternal-infant bonding had come. Both Martha and Lilly were ready. It was their first session with me since the cruise. I helped each of them to go into trance. Then I said, "Lilly, your mother loves you, deeply and dearly."

Lilly left her chair. Without a word she took the few steps to where Martha was waiting in the recliner, and, looking only at her mother, sat on her lap and put her right arm around Martha's shoulder.

110

Martha held her quietly, lovingly, as I left the room. When I returned, five minutes later, the bonding had taken place.

Lilly is eleven now. One recent incident has proven the invincible strength of the mother-daughter bond. Two girls at school had been teasing and annoying Lilly on the playground to the point where it had been difficult to escape them. Following the mother-daughter bonding in hypnosis, Lilly was emotionally stronger than she had ever been before. When the girls offered her a small bottle of wine at the recess break, Lilly took it and poured the wine on the ground. She handed the empty bottle back to the puzzled and angry girls and walked away. She had come into her own.

A few weeks after the bonding session, I asked Martha and Lilly to come in and share with one another and with me their own reactions to the bonding experience. The following are their exact words spoken that day in my office.

Martha: "A huge difference. . . . She comes and puts her arms around me. . . . Xavier, you could not touch her before—she would shrink away from me."

Lilly: "I haven't thrown a fit in a long time. . . . I love her more (with hands on her mother's shoulder)."

_____________________

111

Monica and Alex +Walter

Monica was the mother of twin five year old boys, Alex and Walter. From birth, Alex was a normal, bright, happy child, and Walter was restless, mischievous, and moody. One knew what to expect of Alex—usually. With Walter, one could expect surprise and at the most unexpected moments and in the most unexpected places. And there was two and a half year old Dean.

It was her own "unexpected moments" that brought her to the phone crying, "Xavier, may I come see you, soon! I need you—I’ve tried everything. Nothing works. He was in the bathtub this morning defiant—I grabbed my shoe to hit him, but I stopped in time!" "Come today. Bring Walter, " I answered. Then I gave her the directions to my small condominium, an hour's drive to the north. Her mother would stay with Alex.

Alex was her first born. She had bonded with him from the moment he was placed in her arms. She loved every bit of his seven pound body. Then Walter came, screaming and kicking—the nursery whisking him away to neonatal care before Monica could lay her hand on even a part of him.

When they arrived at my door, I knew what to do. There was no time to lose—I brought Walter to a sitting place on my carpet-covered stairs and served him enough cookies and milk to satisfy his present need. His mother settled quietly into a

112

recliner and sipped a cold drink as she relaxed, answering my few questions. There had been no bond at birth with Walter and none later.

While Walter watched quietly from the stairs I did my bonding. It took less than five minutes as Monica relaxed into a hypnotic trance. Then I brought Walter down the few steps into a corner of the small living area and asked him, "Would you like a nap now? On the blue pillow or the green pillow?"

"Both," he replied. In no time he was asleep on the blue pillow and his arms were wrapped around the green one. I beckoned to Monica to join us, sitting close to Walter on the floor.

"Talk to him now. Say whatever you wanted him to hear when he was born." I moved away, leaving the two of them there alone, Monica whispering, "Walter, I love you." Minutes later, Walter opened his eyes, reached up to put his hands around his mother's neck and said, "I love you, Mom. I love you."

I knew that I must not interrupt the healing that was going on. I moved away as Monica walked over to a chair not far from the front (and only) door. She took out her check book to write a check for me. Walter came over to her (ignoring me) and put his small arm and hand around her shoulder. He tickled her neck. Monica was startled. She looked at him with surprise and joy in her voice. Taking his hand, she held it lovingly and said, "Walter, I used to do that to you when you were a baby."

113

I gave each of them a loving hug and walked them to their car. "Call me tonight," I said to Monica. They were off.

Monica did call. Her voice had a new and awed sound. "He slept all the way home! When we went into the house, Alex and Dean were chasing each other down the hall. 'Stop that!' commanded Walter. 'Don't you know that Mom doesn't want us to run in the hall.'" They stopped, instantly, puzzled at this behavior from Walter.

The bonding experience seemed to have an immediate impact. It continued to change Walter's behavior, his relationship with his family and, best of all, in his outward displays of affection for and trust in his mother.

_____________________________

"You didn't tell us he had asthma!" Mary and Paulie

When Paulie was 12 years old, he went on a week-long outward bound class trip. He chose one and his parents were delighted since he usually disliked spending the night away from home. When his parents picked him up after the trip, the teacher in charge was upset with them.

"You didn't tell us he had asthma!" he said.

"It's news to us," said Paulie's parents.

114

Apparently he had a severe attack which frightened them. They used another child's inhaler on him. When quizzed about this later, Paulie said it happened twice, once when he was kayaking across to an island and a second time around the campfire as the sun set.

As the year progressed, the attacks continued. The local doctor prescribed an inhaler and recommended a follow-up. Subsequently, a second physician decided they were not asthma attacks, but panic attacks. The parents figured out that the attacks occurred under three circumstances: when he was away from his mother, when he was on the water, and when the sun was setting. It was a serious problem and the parents began actively looking for help.

I agreed to see him. I explored his history and asked about his birth. The following was the description f his birth by his mother.

He was born blue. He was blue and he looked dead to me. I grabbed him up to my chest while the doctor tried to take him away from me. My husband finally said to me to give him his child and I released him. The doctor grabbed him and suctioned him and gave him back to me. He took a breath and started to turn pink all over except between his eyes. I rubbed the frown between his eyes and said, “It's OK, baby.”

I hypnotized Paulie in my office with his mother present. I did a bonding between Paulie and his mother. I redid the birthing experience so that

115

he could be "born" without being a "blue baby" and without the mother and child being anxious and afraid.

His mother told me that there was a cessation of the asthma attacks that went with the panic attacks. When he had previously had these loud and obvious attacks, he felt incapacitated and humiliated and that terrible experience was gone. He was now able to have panic attacks without the world knowing and that gave him the psychic room to work out his own approach to his attacks which he has done. His mother said that the whole family was deeply grateful for this change.

116

11 IN THE MOTHERS’ OWN WORDS

Mothers can say it best. The four pieces that follow are what the mothers have said about Bonding Therapy. The first was printed in some form in the magazine Mothering . The second was in Letters to the Editor in a local paper. The third is from the mother of an adult. The fourth is an email that the mother of a former asthmatic sent me.

Maternal-Infant Bonding Therapy---for childhood Asthma? By Elizabeth

I have to admit that when I first heard about Maternal Infant Bonding (MIB) therapy for pediatric asthma, my expectations were modest at best. We’d tried a number of different approaches for controlling our daughter’s asthma, but nothing had really helped all that much. After experimenting with homeopathy, changes in diet

117

and various sorts of energy work including reiki, we turned with some reluctance to allopathic medicine.

The inhalers her doctor prescribed did keep us from frantic trips to the emergency room and eased her discomfort in the night. However, she was still up many times every night, coughing and tossing and turning, struggling to find a position where she could breathe more easily. And of course this meant that she was tired, cranky, and unfocused during the daytime. Her immune system was in a shambles. She was the kid with the chronically runny nose, the one who has that tell-tale shine on the upper lip in every photo.

We adopted Cybele at 5 months. Her breathing difficulties were apparent from the start. Asthma was diagnosed at two years. And it just got worse as she got older. By the time she was three and a half, we had abandoned our hopes that we could manage it without western medicine. At four, I was ready to ask her pediatrician to prescribe oral medication in addition to the inhaled bronchodilator and corticosteroid medications she had come to rely on.

Feeling frustrated and helpless, I vented to a friend who had navigated many complex health and emotional issues with her own child. She told me about a man named Tony Madrid, a psychologist she had worked with to repair her bond with her son. Apparently, the therapeutic process he used to heal broken bonding was having amazing results for kids with asthma.

118

I had no concerns about my bond with Cybele. We were as close as could be, and I couldn’t imagine loving her more. But after talking with Dr. Madrid on the phone, I thought, why not give it a try? I didn’t understand why the process might work on asthma, but we had nothing to lose. It can’t hurt, I said to myself; at most it will take three sessions, and if there is a even a small chance we can ameliorate her symptoms so she doesn’t have to take systemic steroids, then it will be worth the time and money.

A few weeks later, I was sitting across from Tony Madrid in his pleasantly cluttered office. Sunlight filtered through the surrounding redwoods and poured into the room. His dog slept peacefully on the extra chair. An energized man in his mid-sixties, Tony had, I noticed, some of the kindest eyes I’d ever seen. I felt a little more optimistic.

He took a minimal history, and then we got right to work. The first step was to hypnotize me. I had never been hypnotized before and was quite curious to learn how it would feel. As a long-time meditator, I wondered about entering an altered state at someone else’s direction. Tony had me hold a pencil and gaze at its tip while he spoke softly to help me relax. Within a couple of minutes the pencil fell from my grasp as I had been told it would. My eyes closed gently. I was fully conscious and thinking with surprising clarity. In truth, I usually go a lot deeper every morning when I sit to meditate. It was hard to believe that much could come from such a lightly altered state of consciousness. What I didn’t understand at the time was that my unconscious mind was fully accessed

119

and engaged. That was where the work was to be done, and the fact that I remained connected with my conscious mind didn’t interfere.

Once I was under as far as I was apparently going to go, Tony began to take me through the creation of a new experience of my daughter’s gestation and birth, all in my unconscious mind. He started with, “ Imagine that you have just learned you are pregnant. You are filled with anticipation and joy. You feel the beginnings of a new life growing inside you. Let yourself experience a healthy and happy first trimester, and when that feels complete, your index finger will float.”

I’m well practiced at visualization, so although I had never been pregnant before, this was pretty easy. The part about my index finger floating was harder to believe, though. But as I felt really connected to the idea of finishing the first trimester of carrying Cybele, my index finger twitched and then floated, seemingly of its own accord. At his direction, I proceeded to imagine the pregnancy, stage by stage until it was time to give birth.

“Cybele is ready to be born and you are ready to receive her as she comes into the world. You have a quick and effortless delivery, and your baby is laid on your chest. You hold her and you look into each other’s eyes, recognizing each other at once. When this feels complete, your index finger will float.” Tears were streaming down my cheeks while my finger floated. I had never experienced this moment in life and it felt indescribably precious and beautiful. When I

120

arrived for my appointment, I could not have conceived of loving her more than I did. As I sat there, hypnotized, imagining that I was holding her and preparing to nurse for the first time, I felt my heart just break open. For the first time, I experienced the full impact of the biological bond with my daughter. For the first time, I felt like a mama tiger, ready to kill or die for her if necessary. There really was no separation between us. My unconscious mind had truly accepted a new version of events and telegraphed it throughout my being.

Tony led me through the remainder of the process, imagining our life together flowing from this seamless state of connectedness up to the present time. After he brought me out of hypnosis, Tony told me that although he had many questions to ask, I would need a little peace and quiet since I had just given birth. We would meet again the following week to see if any more work was necessary to complete the bonding process.

I felt soft, happy and a little dazed, but utterly functional. I went directly to pick up Cybele at her preschool. When I arrived, she launched herself across the room and into my arms, shouting “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” She covered my face with kisses and told me over and over and over again how much she loved me.

All afternoon, she was beaming, by my side and without question, attached. It was beautiful to be with her. That night, I decide to skip the inhaler. She slept through the night without waking once, and without any coughing. I hardly dared to believe

121

it. The next morning, she said, “Mommy, I lost my cough!”

Six months later, we have not used any medicine. Very rarely, she coughs a little during the night, and once in a while she wakes and needs a mom. But what child doesn’t? Her immune system is much stronger and although she still gets upper respiratory infections, they are much less frequent and severe. She is sleeping, so she is happier and better able to function during the day. She is more confident and her self-esteem has grown. A number of behavior problems have melted away, and best of all, our relationship, which was already wonderful, is now extraordinary.

After the advent of this miracle in our lives—asthma virtually cured in one 50 minute session-- I have learned that our experience is far from unique. Dr. Madrid and his colleagues have been quietly helping to relieve the suffering of many children with asthma using this technique for the last 30 years.

Since he discovered the efficacy of MIB therapy in treating pediatric asthma, Dr. Madrid has researched the connection and published several studies. He and other researchers have found that between 70% and 80% of the children enrolled in studies had experienced one or more of the circumstances that often lead to a break in maternal-infant bonding. He has also shown that for a very high percentage of children under the age of eight with asthma, MIB therapy results in either a significant or complete remission of symptoms. For older children, the results were less dramatic,

122

although many experienced measurable improvement.

Miraculous though it is when applied to pediatric asthma, MIB therapy is not just for breathing problems. It seems to quickly heal wounds that otherwise might take a lifetime of dedicated investigation and therapy to ameliorate. It gives moms and kids who have longed for a loving and joyous relationship another chance, even in cases where the trauma which caused the problem is decades in the past. It can forge new bonds in families formed by adoption. And most fundamentally, it offers children the opportunity to grow up knowing what it means to love and be loved without reservation.

“Mind blowing” By Rene

I can personally attest to the absolute mind-blowing work the Russian River Counselors are doing in the field of asthma, among other things.

My youngest daughter was born at what turned out to be the end of a badly deteriorating marriage and the start of a new, high stress business for me. Talk about stress! Of my three daughters, she is still the only one with asthma. Despite the many, many paths we tried to alleviate her condition, the severity of her attacks continued to escalate. Careful monitoring of her medications, diet, environment, exercise, etc., etc., did little to help and I have lost count of how many times we had to rush to the emergency room for breathing treatment (sometimes 2, 3, 4 treatments per episode, sometimes 2 or even 3 in a month).

123

Things were going from bad to worse with my daughter requiring huge amounts of oral steroids and several different inhalers on a daily basis, when Dr. Madrid asked if we would be interested in participating in a trial therapy for asthma. What did we have to lose? We jumped at the chance and I am grateful on a daily basis that we were offered the opportunity.

The results were nothing short of a miracle and they were almost immediate. It has been several years since the treatment and my daughter has not needed emergency room treatments or oral steroids for her asthma since that time. The bonus? My daughter and I have always been close but the treatment brought us even closer, on a deeper level.

Both of us and all our family and friends will be grateful forever to the Russian River Counselors for allowing us to participate in their ground breaking work.

Bonding with an adult daughter By Mary

I am the mother of four daughters all delivered by Cesarean section in the 1960's.  My third daughter, Katherine, born in 1967, weighed 5 lbs, 13 oz. and came into this world with hyaline membrane disease--her lungs were not yet fully developed and it was before they had the pre-natal treatment available to mothers now. She was immediately taken to the NICU at the nearby University of Colorado Medical Center (another hospital) and I--recovering from my C-section--was

124

given daily reports (some positive, some negative) about her condition from her pediatrician.  It was a very stressful and emotional time. 

As soon as I was discharged, I went to see her.  The first time I held her--with IV's everywhere and removed from her O2--she started to nurse.  In less than a minute, she become ice cold and turned a dark blue from her sucking effort and was returned immediately to her incubator.  Each time she got a bit stronger and could nurse a bit longer. 

For the next month, I went to the hospital every few hours to nurse her--all the while they were giving her tests to see if any oxygen deprivation might have more permanent damage.  Finally, I got to take her home--almost five weeks after her birth.

For the next several months and intermittently during her early years, she continued being tested to assess any problems.  There appears to have been none, for which I am eternally grateful. (She graduated from Ursuline High School with a 4.4GPA, received a BA from UC, San Diego, is fluent in French and Spanish, has an MBA from UC, Berkeley, a very successful career, a wonderful marriage, and now two beautiful, healthy children of her own.)

  Certainly, initially she received excellent medical care.  However, the complete absence of any maternal-infant contact in the hours and days after her birth was always of concern to me.  So, she and I decided to work with Sister X (Xavier McPhee)--an Ursuline nun, a colleague of mine, a

125

licensed marriage and family therapist, and a wonderful practitioner of clinical hypnotherapy.

She hypnotized me and Katherine (now in her thirties) and we re-programmed our birth experience exactly as we would have wanted it to be.  It was quite beautiful--a most wonderful "re-enactment"! We left the Montgomery Drive office walking on air; I remember it as if it were yesterday. 

  For me, it put the finishing--and healing--touch on the raising of this child.  Later, Katherine found it hard to put words to it, but she said somehow she had a new "understanding;" and our relationship, which was good prior to our work with X, seemed to get even stronger. 

Today, it is thrilling to see what a wonderful mother Katherine herself has turned out to be.  Her daughters, Paloma and Natalia, are indeed blessed and I think we all owe a good minion of gratitude to dear Xavier.

__________________________

     It has been a while since I have updated you on Juanita. We have been very busy these past couple of months. She is still doing very well. She has not needed any treatments since I saw you. At her 9 month check-up last month, the doctor asked if we were still doing them and when I said no, she agreed that it didn't seem like she needed them anymore. She had a cold at the beginning of March. I went over my new memories in my head and she got over her cold on her own. It feels so wonderful

126

knowing that she is ok after everything we went through. It still makes me a little teary eyed at times when I think about how well she is doing. Tears of joy, of course! 

     When the doctor told us she had asthma, I just imagined that she would never truly have a "normal" life. That she would always have to have medicine to be able to breathe well. That she would be a little "different" than most kids. And, that her brother Mario would also be affected by the stress that we would go through. Even though I can remember that day clearly, it is as though it happened to someone else. As though I didn't go through it myself. I am proud to talk about my experience. To talk about everything that I went through while I was pregnant and after Juanita was born. I am especially proud to share about my session with you. The day I talked about it at the coalition meeting here at work, there was about 15 people or so, and I shared my story without any tears. Before I saw you, just thinking about it would make me cry. I have never met Elizabeth West, but as long as a live, there will be a place in my heart for her and for you as well. Had it not been for her writing that article about you, and had it not been for you meeting with me, my life and more importantly, Juanita’s life, would be so very different than it is now. I will forever be thankful for you and for Elizabeth. I can not thank you enough.      I am not sure if you know about the Basilica in Mexico City. It is the most gorgeous church that I have ever seen with a beautiful portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe. People pray for many, many things and ask that if it comes true they will

127

make the trip to see her and thank her. The day that I told my mom about not being well, she told me to pray that she would get better. My mom prayed, and promised the Virgin that if she did get better, we would take Juanita to her and we would give thanks there at that church. That was the reason for our trip to Mexico. And on February 18th, my husband, Mario, my mom and dad, and I made that drive to Mexico City to see the portrait, and to give our thanks. Had it not been for you, Juanita would not be so healthy and who knows if we would have ever gone. That day I thanked the Virgin for me having found you. I just can't say it enough, I will forever be thankful to you.      Just the other day I came across Juanita’s albuterol and pulmicort while I was cleaning. I smiled as I picked it up and carried it over to the garbage can. That was such a wonderful feeling. Its great knowing that she doesn't need to depend on medicine to be well. 

  

128

12 PROTOCOL FOR THERAPISTS

When the there is a bonding problem, the therapy is a simple, three-part treatment:

1. Identify the Non-Bonding Event.2. Treat the original painful experience. 3. Create a new birth.

1. Identify the Non-Bonding Event (NBE)

When I am presented with a problem that might be due to a bonding failure, I want to know if there really is a bonding problem. I ask about the associated features of a bonding disruption. I ask, “Tell me about your child when he was young.” I try to elicit answers to the following questions, which point to non-bonding:

Was he colicky? Was he hard to please?

129

Does he cling to you? Was always “at you.” Did he have asthma? How did you feel about him?

And then I ask about his pregnancy and birth, to find the reason for the bonding problem:

How was his birth? How was your pregnancy? How were you doing at that time in

your life? How long before you held him? What did that feel like? Did anything happen to you

afterwards? How was your emotional state? What did it feel like when you first

held him?

I use the Maternal-Infant Bonding Survey to help me think through the proper questions. You can find these in the Appendix. Or I refer the mother to the online questionnaire at: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2hsh2ikfsttkk7o/start

There is often more than one NBE associated with non-bonding. A mother may have been going through a rough patch in her marriage and also was very sick during the pregnancy. Or a mother may have been separated from her child for a long time after the birth and her living situation was horrible when she returned home. Sometimes it is clear that one NBE in particular is responsible for the majority of the interference with bonding,

130

but it is safe to identify all possible things that may have interfered and clear them all.

2. Treat the original painful experience

Once the painful experiences or NBEs have been identified, they need to be treated, by any intervention that works. I’ve used hypnosis and EMDR to do the processing, but other modalities such as art work or gestalt therapy could be equally as effective. You can find detailed presentations of the uses of hypnosis and EMDR for this work on the website for the Russian River Counselors: www.rivershrink.com.

Each experience can be dealt with separately, or all of them might be able to be treated at once. There have been cases where I’ve said, “Now take all of those experiences during pregnancy and clear them all out; heal them once and for all. You’ve been working on healing from them for years; now is the time to finish the work.” And that will do it.

At other times, for whatever reasons, each has to be treated separately:

“Now heal the pain from finding out that you were pregnant in that embarrassing fashion.”

“Now heal the pain from being shamed by your parents that you were pregnant.”

“Now heal being sick during your pregnancy.”

“Now heal the painful delivery.”

One may need to go down the list of NBEs that was generated in the previous section. As one

131

goes down the list, other NBEs are often remembered. Add them to the list of NBEs that need treatment. If you don’t get them all and there still is one that is a major impediment to bonding, it will come up later in the next section.

This section can take anywhere from one to several sessions. Surprisingly, one does not need to go through the experiences with a fine brush to sweep out all the traumatic residue. Nor does one need to explore and weed out all the associations. Just get it done as quickly as possible. The unconscious mind can do this in record speed.

3. Create a new birth

The main task here is for the mother to experience what it feels like to be connected with her baby from the first moments of life, through the birth to the present time. When she can feel that, then they are bonded. With that task in mind, the mother is asked to return to the beginnings of her child’s life, this time allowing good images to form. She herself will supply the details that are important for her, most often without much input from the therapist. The following guidelines are suggested:

When she finds out that she was pregnant.

The first trimester; the second; the third. Talking to her baby inside. A fast labor and delivery. When the baby takes its first breath and

she sees the baby. When the baby is placed on her chest,

and they look into each other’s eyes.

132

When the baby nurses. Keeping the baby with her at all times. Through the first eight hours. Through the first day, week, month,

year. To the present time.

At each stage, her unconscious mind is asked to know what this feels like and is asked to give an indication when it’s done. If there is any trouble in achieving each goal, there may be something still interfering; and more work needs to be done. For example, a mother may have trouble with feeling the baby nursing because she still hasn’t processed the painful original memory of the staff refusing to let her nurse. This needs to be processed by hypnosis, EMDR, or some other method before the work can continue.

It is important to have new memories through the period that originally interfered with bonding. For example, if the mother’s brother died right after the baby was born and that broke the bond, then she has to feel what it’s like to be connected with her baby through the first year, without any grief. She should be able to do this, if the grief has been properly processed.

Two articles that are more detailed about the process can be viewed online, at our website: www.rivershrink.com. Scroll down to the section on Maternal-infant Bonding and the section on Pediatric Asthma.

A follow-up session can pick up any trouble that interferes with the ongoing bonding process.

133

Because the bonding is new, it is also delicate and fragile. Things occasionally occur that break the bond. The mother needs to process the reasons for the break and she can be instructed on how to learn from the experience. A few examples may help to clarify.

A mother may report that she feels upset with her child again, just like before. In questioning her about what happened, she reports that she got mad at her son when he pulled his sister’s hair. She “lost it.” She remembers that her brother used to do that to her, and her parents would never protect her. She now sees how this interfered with her love for her son, and she is asked to process all the old stuff about her brother, quickly, and return to her love for her son. She does this in a few minutes. And she is educated about how to prevent these bonding disrupt ions in the future.

A mother reports that her son’s asthma has returned, after a visit from her mother and father. She reveals that her parents criticized how she “was” with her child, and she felt horrible. She processes this incident and returns to feeling love for her child. She is instructed about protecting this delicate chord between her and her son, and is told to be alert about the occasions when she can be overwhelmed with feelings that interfere with this bond.

A mother tells that she feels cold to her child again, after feeling wonderful towards him. This happened when her boyfriend is forced to stay away from the family by Child Protective Services because of past drug behavior. She looks at the

134

situation and understands how she feels resentful towards her son because the county got involved with her family because of mistreatment towards him. She puts it into perspective—because of him her boyfriend is getting into treatment and their family will be reunited at some time. She feels better about her son now, and returns to feeling the love again.

At times, the mother may need additional counseling to work out past or present life issues that may continue to interfere with bonding. The focus, however, is on returning quickly to the mother and child reunion.

There is a Bonding Therapy Manual, which gives additional direction. You can find it on www.lulu.com.

I am available to consult with you: madrid@sonic.net or 707-865-1200.

135

13 THE MATERNAL-INFANT BONDING SURVEY

Your name______________________

Child’s name ____________________

The following questions are designed to see if there are any factors that may have had some impact on your child’s birth.

POSSIBLE PREGNANCY PROBLEMS

Y N ?

Had worrisome bleeding during pregnancyHad toxemiaVomited a lotHad to be medicatedGained too much weightTook a lot of illegal drugsDrank excessivelyWas sick through much of pregnancyLabor lasted longer than 15 hoursHad a difficult deliveryHad a Caesarean SectionWas put to sleep for deliveryGot hurt during pregnancy

136

POSSIBLE OTHER PREGNANCY PROBLEMS

Y N ?

Had a previous miscarriageWas overly depressed during pregnancyWas very scared during pregnancyLost someone close during pregnancyHad marital problems during pregnancyHad serious financial problems during pregnancyHad a serious loss after the child was bornWas overly depressed after the child was bornHad emotional problems after the child was bornWas very sick during deliveryWas very sick after the baby was bornChild was a twin or tripletMoved during pregnancy or first year

137

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BABY AFTER IT WAS BORN?

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

HOW LONG AFTER THE BABY WAS BORN DID YOU HOLD IT?

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

138

WHAT WAS IT LIKE WHEN YOU FIRST HELD THE BABY?

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

_________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

BABY’S CONDITION Y N ?Injured during birthWas born jaundicedHad trouble breathingBorn with cord around neckWas sick after birthSpent time in an incubatorSpent time in an Intensive Care NurseryWas born prematureHad an infectionNeeded oxygenVomited oftenGagged oftenWas kept in hospital after mother went home

139

LIST OTHER PROBLEMS THAT OCCURRED DURING PREGANCY, DELIVERY, OR THE FIRST COUPLE OF MONTHS OF THE BABY’S LIFE.

1. ___________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________

3. ___________________________________________

4. ___________________________________________

5. ___________________________________________

6. ___________________________________________

7. ___________________________________________

BABY’S PROBLEMSIN THE BEGINNING

Y N ?

Colic

140

Coughed a lotWheezedWas sicklyDifficult to calm or comfortCried oftenWas demandingCould not be aloneDid not like to be heldIrritableWas easily upsetHad lots of mucousWas frightened easilySeemed in pain a lotDifficult to consoleFeeding difficultiesWas not affectionate

ANY OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR BABY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF LIFE?

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

_________________________________________

___________________________________

141

____________________________________

ANY OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY DURING PREGNANCY, BIRTH, OR THE FIRST YEARS OF YOUR CHILD’S LIFE?

__________________________________________

_________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

ANY OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S CONDITION?

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

142

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

143

MIBS LIGHT

PHYSICAL SEPARATION

Mother was separated from child at or after birth.

Mother had a very difficult delivery. Child was sick at birth. Child was twin or triplet. Intensive Care Nursery or incubator. Mother was anesthetized at birth. Mother was very sick after the birth. Mother was separated from child in

first month. Child was adopted. Other separation occurred.

EMOTIONAL SEPARATION

Mother had emotional problems during pregnancy.

Mother had emotional problems after birth.

Mother had a death in the family within two years of birth.

144

Mother had a miscarriage within two years of birth.

Mother and father were separated before birth or soon after.

Mother was addicted to drugs or alcohol at birth.

Mother moved before or soon after birth.

Severe financial problems. Unwanted pregnancy. New romance in mother's life. Other event which could have

interfered with bonding.

145

14 References

Cheek, D., & LeCron, L. (1968) Clinical hypnotherapy . New York: Grune and Stratton.

Klaus, M., & Kennell, J. (1976). Maternal-Infant Bonding. St. Louis: Mosby.

Lovett, J., Small Wonders.

Madrid, A., Ames, R., Horner, D., Brown, G., & Navarrette, L. (2004). Improving Asthma Symptoms in Children by Repairing the Maternal-Infant Bond. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, 18, (3), Spring, 221-231.

Madrid, A., Ames., R., Skolek, S., & Brown, G. (2000). Does Maternal-Infant Bonding Therapy Improve Asthmatic Children’s Breathing? Journal of

Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, 15, (2), 90-117.

Madrid, A., & McPhee, M. Xavier. (1985). The Treatment of Pediatric Asthma Through Maternal-infant Bonding in Hypnosis: II. The Pre and Perinatal Psychology Journal, 1, 1, 24-28.

Madrid, A., & Pennington, D. (2000). Maternal-Infant Bonding and Asthma.

Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, 14,

146

3, 279-289.

Madrid, A., Skolek, S., & Shapiro, F. (2006). Repairing failures in bonding through EMDR. Clinical Case Series, 5, 4, 271-286.

Poindron, P., and Le Neindre, P. (1979). Hormonal and behavioral basis for establishing maternal behavior in sheep. In ichella,L., and Panchari, R., editors: Psychoneuroendocrinology in reproduction, Amsterdam, Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press.

Sackett, G. P. and Ruppenthal, G. C. (1974). in Lewis, M., and Rosenblum, L.A. editors: The effect of the infant on its caregiver, New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Shapiro, F. (2001). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures. Second edition. New York: Guilford Press.

147