Hi, all...I'm a person who was born two months premature in 1959; I spent the first three months of my life in an incubator and an Isolette. I have been reading a great deal about the effects of pre- and postnatal trauma on brain development (Robert Scaer's book, The Trauma Spectrum, and Thomas Lewis, et. al, A General Theory of Love, are excellent resources) and I wish to connect with others who had a similar infancy.

It seems that I was born traumatized -- to a mother who was becoming addicted to alcohol and who had severe depression. Medical interventions, necessary as they are to sustain life, are extremely alarming to a baby's raw nervous system...and I wonder if there's any hope of reducing their impact. I'm 48 now and have always felt like I'm "in a box" and hopelessly cut off from some vital ability to bond with others, and to feel anything other than a constant underlying state of panic. I've come a long way in my journey from trauma...and after all these years on this good earth, I wonder if I just have to accept that my brain and nervous system are permanently altered.

Has anyone else here experienced trauma through medical intervention in infancy?

Roo