[Consequences of peridural analgesia for the Cesarean experience and initial mother-child relations]

Semi-directed interviews were conducted with 103 primiparous women between the 3rd and the 6th day after delivery to compare the effects of the two methods of anaesthesia on the way they experienced caesarean operation. Analysis of the contents of the interviews show that the mothers who had caesarean operation under general anaesthesia were more often depressed than those who had an epidural. Overall, the experience of delivery was more satisfying when the caesarean took place under an epidural because it enabled the mother to take part in the delivery. The mothers who were unconscious because they had a general anaesthetic felt sorrow that they deprived of the experience of the delivery. All the same, it must be said that one-third of the women felt ill-at-ease owing to delivery under epidural, both physically and psychologically. The first contacts with the infant are earlier and less disagreeable after epidural analgesia, but in the days following the delivery the interactions between mother and baby and the comments the mothers make about their child do not differ markedly whichever form of anaesthesia has been used.