Caregiving in Mothers' Narratives of Perinatal Hospice

Abstract

A mother whose baby is diagnosed prenatally with a life-threatening condition frequently has weeks or months to prepare for birth and death. Research and anecdotal evidence affirm a mother's mindful journey with her unborn child. Bowlby's theory of caregiving, reciprocal to attachment, provides a theoretical framework for this study. Caregiving includes the goals of protecting, nurturing, and socializing a child. The authors used directed content analysis for a secondary analysis of data from the category of caregiving, created in a prior study of 15 mothers recruited from perinatal hospice support organizations. Results identify multiple ways that mothers protect, nurture, and socialize, and add a new category: final acts of caregiving. Understanding caregiving as a goal-corrected system strengthens the evidence for giving mothers every opportunity to care for their babies in ways that are normal and natural to them.