Belgium

Claire Goldman

The status of the NBAS seems good in Brussels. Every year, Marie-Paule Durieux and I have 4/5 new trainees and we are still pleased to train them with the rigor of the procedure and with psychoanalytic listening. Our Brussels group consists of seven child-psychiatrists, who gather together every two months, to discuss the clinical use of the NBAS and to talk about new projects. We continue to practice the NBAS with late preterm babies who were born before the 32 weeks of GA, and who had a weight less than 1,5 kg. In addition, Maya Szombat is working for her thesis on the use of the NBAS with very disturbed mothers and their babies. Many « young » psychologists and child-psychiatrists are involved in the NBAS, and in the reliability session that gives a real « Brazelton identity ». One of our « young colleagues » is planning to be trained in the NBO. Marie-Paule and I prefer to let the new team work on the NBO as we feel that it is important for both of us to remain the guardians of the « classic NBAS » which gives a wider and more refined landscape of the “essence” of the baby. We plan to gather different «NBAS » reports in a book, as a clinical view on the wonderful diversity of babies, and on the importance to the tiny body signs a baby can let us see, related to the intersubjective interaction with its parents. This project was born in the last annual meeting we organize every fall with all the NBAS practitioners we have trained: a real pleasure! In sum, we are now offering NBAS consultations in 4 hospitals, while Marie-Paule still continues to use the NBAS to sensitize professionals to newborn behavior and development. We continue to deliver oral presentations and we write articles (in French…) to extend “the NBAS story” in the French-speaking countries.