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**Chapter 5**

Provisional chapter

**Prenatal Attachment in Twin Pregnancy**

Twin births are associated with several medical, healthcare, socio-emotional, psychological and developmental consequences for families. Parents generally describe twin pregnancies as physically and emotionally difficult. Moreover, compared to singleton pregnancies, twin pregnancies are reported to carry higher maternal as well as perinatal morbidity and mortality. The aim of this chapter is to review literature on twin pregnancy and to give a comprehensive framework about parents' experience of expecting twins. An important issue related to the psychological adjustment during twin pregnancies is prenatal attachment. During pregnancy, mothers use to think about their child-to-be, and they start to create representation of themselves as mothers. Prenatal attachment in twin pregnancies may differ from that in singleton ones. During a twin pregnancy, the motherto-be has to deal with an identification process with two children at the same time and have to create a mental space that allow her to make representation of both children. The monitoring of these pregnancies is important for the creation and the consolidation of these maternal representations: ultrasound examinations revealed the fetal gender that facilitates naming the unborn twins and thinking to them as individuals and this is

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.79365

particularly important in the case of complicated twin pregnancies.

Keywords: twins, twin pregnancy, prenatal attachment, maternal-fetal relationship

Currently, twin pregnancies account approximately for 3% of all live births [1]. The number of twin pregnancies has dramatically increased over the last four decades in all of the countries where we have information from vital statistics [2]. One of the main reasons for this recent increase of twin pregnancies is associated to the fact that mean maternal age at childbearing has considerably raised. The responsible factors are socio-economic contingencies and the

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Prenatal Attachment in Twin Pregnancy

Chiara Ionio, Eleonora Mascheroni, Caterina Colombo and Gianluca Lista

Chiara Ionio, Eleonora Mascheroni, Caterina Colombo and Gianluca Lista

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79365

Abstract

1. Introduction

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### **Prenatal Attachment in Twin Pregnancy** Prenatal Attachment in Twin Pregnancy

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.79365

Chiara Ionio, Eleonora Mascheroni, Caterina Colombo and Gianluca Lista Chiara Ionio, Eleonora Mascheroni, Caterina Colombo and Gianluca Lista

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79365

#### Abstract

Twin births are associated with several medical, healthcare, socio-emotional, psychological and developmental consequences for families. Parents generally describe twin pregnancies as physically and emotionally difficult. Moreover, compared to singleton pregnancies, twin pregnancies are reported to carry higher maternal as well as perinatal morbidity and mortality. The aim of this chapter is to review literature on twin pregnancy and to give a comprehensive framework about parents' experience of expecting twins. An important issue related to the psychological adjustment during twin pregnancies is prenatal attachment. During pregnancy, mothers use to think about their child-to-be, and they start to create representation of themselves as mothers. Prenatal attachment in twin pregnancies may differ from that in singleton ones. During a twin pregnancy, the motherto-be has to deal with an identification process with two children at the same time and have to create a mental space that allow her to make representation of both children. The monitoring of these pregnancies is important for the creation and the consolidation of these maternal representations: ultrasound examinations revealed the fetal gender that facilitates naming the unborn twins and thinking to them as individuals and this is particularly important in the case of complicated twin pregnancies.

Keywords: twins, twin pregnancy, prenatal attachment, maternal-fetal relationship
