Have you ever not fed/hydrated an infant?

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The thread on the general nursing board has me curious. I have never seen this in our unit. If the baby is able to get off the vent and have a "life" as bad as it may be, we always attempt feeds and give IVF. Most of our kids like this end up NG or GT fed. We have had DNR kids go home with tube feeds, but we have never offered the option of just taking them home without anything. That poor little one most likely has enough brain left to go on ticking along for a while.

Sigh...I really don't like those big full term kids like that :o

Specializes in NICU, Telephone Triage.
We've had a couple of babies that had all support withdrawn with expectations they would pass quickly; and they didn't. It may have happened more than that but in those two cases the parents eventually left and went home and left the baby with us where we held the babes until they passed. One was a higher gestational age (maybe term) trisomy 18 that had been on tons of drips and HFOV for it's heart but it was alert and ok after all support withdrawn. We were allowed to nipple feed it but poor thing didn't have a clue what to do with the bottle. Thankfully it's heart issue caught up quickly.

I don't understand leaving your dying baby in the hospital but I know this; I can't imagine the trauma and grief and I cannot pass judgement on someone going through something I hope to God never to experience. What I know is that those babes felt love and compassion from a fellow human being in their final moments.

I know what you mean...how can the parents leave? i've seen that, too. But everyone knows what they can handle. One time we had a family that was extremely grief stricken and kinda loud, so they went to a different hospital room until the baby passed away. It was very sad.

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I can only think of one we sent home without feeds, because she was such a mess the food was pouring back out of her.

Can't think of any that we d/c's fluids on. Some never lived long enough to even start feeds.

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Specializes in NICU.

I've seen this done once. 37 weeker with mid gut volvulus and that became necrotic in utero. Baby had no gut. All support, including IVF was discontinued. She had a hep-lock for ATC morphine. When she lost that, they did nasal fentanyl.

According to the attending, dehydration causes the release of endorphins. ???

All I know is that I was 26 weeks pg caring for this babe and it was gawd awfully sad. Ugh. STill makes me teary!

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