Neonatal stories: the love and pain of motherhood

“Exactly two years ago, my daughter Nina arrived.

After a natural birth on the full moon of September 21.

Nina came to disarm me. To transform all my security. My pride. My calm.

He came to question all my strengths. This required my utmost ferocity.

Nina arrived fragile. Nina arrived and I saw, with her little eyes fixed on mine, that she was out of breath.

In such a small but giant time, Nina came to show me a parallel world.

A world of death and survival. A world of struggle. Warriors and warriors.

Alarms, lights, monitors and midwives. Of terrified mothers leaving the milk to indulge in it.

Nina came to show me the liminal space between life and death.

Nina also came to teach me the gratitude and ultimate joy of having her as my daughter. The appreciation of life and the pleasure of its smell.

And Nina came to carry the second part of a trilogy around the shadows of motherhood.

So playwright and director Eliana Furman talks about the origin of ‘(Neonatology )’, the second production in a trilogy of works around motherhood which begins with ‘(Puerperio)’, released in July 2021. It is precisely her experience, becoming a mother, which led her to create this project (on Ig @proyectopuerperio ). “When I became a mother I said how crazy it was, I couldn’t believe it. And I had a very good pregnancy and delivery, a happy postpartum period, with a stable partner for many years. Yet it seemed crazy to me and I felt the need to make motherhood visible and reflect on it,” she says. With your work, then, depicts usually silent aspects of the lives of many women, which are neither discussed nor made visible and, therefore, very little known and lived with a lot of solitude. “This project puts into tension sociocultural discourses that have become established over time, ignoring complex and fundamental aspects that are also part of the process of becoming a mother,” she continues.

After this first edit, Eliana clearly understood that there was still a lot to say; The idea of ​​a trilogy floated in his head. However, she was unsure of the theme of the second work, until the birth of Nina, her second daughter. “Because of these things in life, I got pregnant again. “It seems like my body forgot about the postpartum period!” he jokes. And this time the experience was different. “My daughter arrived with a virus, we never really knew what it was, but thanks to that she was at ‘La Neo’ – as Neonatology is colloquially called, a hospital section dedicated to diagnosis and treatment of human beings for the first 28 years. days of life – for six days. “That’s how I discovered what really seemed to me to be a parallel world.”

The production highlights the personal experiences of four women around Neonatology. : a midwife who works in this unit; an academic whose baby died at birth; an actress who managed to survive her long hospitalization with newborn Neo; and a perinatal psychologist who kept her son hospitalized for months but was ultimately saved. These four women, using contemporary theater techniques such as biodrama and documentary theater, take to a small, intimate stage with their own stories, experiences and emotions, and it shows. There they expose topics such as survival, death, motherhood, mourning, guilt, violence, care and neglect of health teams, with a creativity and sensitivity that makes you laugh and cry.

And – as Eliana assures – these types of theatrical techniques allow us to bring theater closer to life and generate reflection from a daily and profound place. And at the same time, “poetry” their stories. “It’s not just about telling them, but also reconfiguring that story so that it can be resignified.” For those who go on stage, but also for other women,” she explains.

In the research process to make the edit, Eliana learned that 10% of babies born alive go through Neo. “The number of buses and therefore also of women who have had this experience and who have it in their body is very high, because it is an experience which remains in the body”, said. This is also why the reaction of many of those who went to see the work. “A collective experience is undoubtedly generated, both in the theater and in Neo itself. A sisterly relationship between women who experience similar emotions. In fact, one of the four women who participate in the work is a perinatal psychologist who was hospitalized with her son for several months and who, in her own way, tried to support the women who arrived with their babies,” she says. .

Or what’s up with the guilt. The academic who loses her daughter repeatedly asks herself, or asks the midwife, what would have happened if she had gone to the hospital sooner? Could your bus have been saved? “It’s a question we all ask ourselves because guilt is part of motherhood. I asked myself this question too; Could it be that it was the fish I ate, perhaps half raw, that contained the virus my daughter was born with? It’s crazy, but it happens to women and it’s important to talk about it, because it’s restorative to do so,” adds Eliana.

And it is also important that it is us, the women, who speak about it, through our experience and our voice. The imagination of motherhood is influenced by the stories we see in advertising, cinema, literature, theater, etc., and that is why it is important to know who tells them. For a long time, even if it was our story, it was the men who told it. “It seems to me that the way to change the paradigms around motherhood comes from us. It is we who put on our bodies, and therefore the possibility of seeing artistically represented the vulnerability and pain that we experience, is essential to continue to amplify a process of collective consciousness regarding the great feminine wound that perpetuates patriarchy. », he concludes.

NEONATOLOGY CONTACT INFORMATION

Until November 26

Thursday to Sunday, 7 p.m.

Duration: 60 minutes

Recommended for ages 14 and up.

General admission. Pay what you can: $6,000 – $8,000 – $10,000. / $4,000 – Students and seniors / $3,000 Popular Friday

In the workshop space, Yolanda Hurtado room (Ernesto Pinto Lagarrigue 191, Barrio Bellavista, Recoleta).

https://ticketplus.cl/events/neonatologia-2023-11-02-19-00-00-0300