A publication called Star-Telegram has an interesting profile of work done by the palliative care team at the Baylor All Saints Medical Center to help grieving parents of newborns with fatal diagnoses. As the article states, most people don't think of babies when they hear of "palliative care," but for parents who have given birth to babies with incurable diseases, the need for palliative care is a tragic reality.
The article talks specifically about couples who learn of the fatal diagnoses during pregnancy but who choose to continue the pregnancy despite the diagnosis due to religious or philosophical preferences. Neonatalogists at the Baylor All Saints Medical Center realized that these parents would need support as they worked their way through the grief and expanded their palliative care team to meet the need. Now, whenever impending stillbirths or infant deaths are detected in advance, palliative care specialists can be present to support the parents during labor and delivery, make sure the parents are not subjected to unnecessary uncomfortable questions or other circumstances, give a chance to bathe and hold their babies, and assist with funeral arrangements and grief support.
In my opinion, every hospital with a labor and delivery department ought to have such services in place for parents suffering a loss at any stage of pregnancy. With all the horror stories out there about how parents are sometimes treated when they seek pregnancy loss treatment at emergency rooms, it is certainly refreshing to read about a hospital that seems to have the right idea.
