I almost exploded with anger today

Where do we draw the fucking line between compassionate care and torture?

We had a baby in our NICU this week that finally passed today after circling the drain for almost two weeks. This baby had a chromosomal disorder incompatible with life; had multiple anomalies (common to genetic disorder) and showed liver failure early on. This family knew of the anomalies while the baby was in-utero but we have an attending who is known via social media to do any and all things to “prolong” life for children with chromosomal disorders. This attending is known across the NICU for never giving parents the full picture and pushing for our surgical teams to give in to parents’ wishes for trachs and cardiac surgeries.

In this case, this poor child’s parents legitimately said “we prefer the quantity of days with [baby] over quality.”

Family lives a few hours away and has other children.

Baby finally codes today and because parents had desired a full code, we did chest compressions and the whole shebang. When family was notified of the death, they can’t even be bothered to come see [baby]. Their excuse is that they have other things they need to do and take care of their other kids.

We do bereavement care: molds, footprints, handprints, photos.

Parents desire that we don’t remove any of the lines/feeding tube/endotracheal tube.

We use a cuddle cot (a cooling blanket to help prevent rigor mortis) and parents call hours later to ask what will happen to her body until they eventually can get there. Like what the fuck?!

Their child died without their parents (or anyone) holding them and loving on them.

Now this poor baby will sit in a fridge until their family picks them up. Or a funeral home picks them up.

I’m so sick and fucking tired of loving on babies while their parents choose for us, the nicu team, to slowly torture their babies and we allow it.

It’s fucking evil. I love my job but sometimes I feel like I’m causing so much pain and suffering and the parents have no fucking clue.