Abstract

SILVA, Isabella Monteiro de Castro; TUNES, Elizabeth  and  DIAS, Adriana de Rezende. Mother representations on cleft lip and palate baby. Rev. bras. educ. espec. [online]. 2002, vol.08, n.01, pp.93-108. ISSN 1413-6538.

The present study aimed to accomplish mother representations of their babies with cleft lip and palate. Ten mothers in their 26 years old as average whose babies had cleft lip and palate were interviewed. After the transcription and analysis of the mother perceptions about the baby problem, nine out of ten mothers have had related difficulties in nurturing after birth. The representations, in the beginning fulfilled by anxiety and traumas, have passed quickly to a stage of search for improvement, at last, to stabilize in a serenity stage. This period of changing have showed to be very fast in comparison to cases of mothers whose babies were diagnosed with mental or other kind of physical distortion. The adaptation of the mothers to the presence of the cleft in the baby have stabilized after the surgeries in three months for cleft lip and -and a year for - cleft palate. It hasn’t been observed the use of labels of deficiency in the speech of the mothers. The center of the representations had focused on the esthetics appearance: in the beginning the physical distortion, passing through worries about the speech quality. On both cases, the surgery had brought tranquility to the mothers. These three factors (absence of labels, center of the representation and hope with the surgery) seem to justify the quickness within the establishment and stabilization of the interviewed mother representations. The study of representation of the babies with cleft lip and palate has showed to be useful on the evaluation of the dynamics of motherhood perceptions.

Keywords : Social Representation; Cleft Lip and Palate; Mother Representation.

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