Perinatal palliative care

If you’ve learned through a prenatal diagnosis that your baby has a life-limiting condition or terminal illness, our perinatal palliative care team is here to support you through the next steps with comfort and care. We help you make a birth plan, process challenging emotions, and create memories with your baby.

You receive expert medical, emotional, and spiritual support through perinatal palliative care. Our team provides family-centered care that honors your wishes and personal values. Your perinatal palliative care team includes:

• Chaplains: provide emotional, spiritual, or religious support, if desired
• Genetic counselors: help you understand the diagnosis and potential outcomes
• Maternal-fetal medicine specialists: physicians with expertise in managing complicated and high-risk pregnancies
• Labor and delivery nurses: nurses who provide planning, care, and monitoring for you and your baby during childbirth
• Lactation specialists: help you breastfeed your baby or care for your breasts following childbirth
• Neonatal nurses: nurses who care for your infant in the intensive care nursery
• Neonatologists: pediatricians trained to care for sick and premature infants
• Postpartum nurses: care for you after childbirth
• Social workers: help you process emotions, make birth plans, and determine your care goals and discharge needs

What can my family expect from perinatal palliative care?

Perinatal palliative care means we meet your unique needs during pregnancy, childbirth, and after you leave the hospital. We want you to be the parents you desire to be, even if your baby’s life may be short. We help you prepare for birth and honor your baby as you would like.

Pregnancy

We provide you with a prenatal diagnosis using our advanced prenatal testing services. Our maternal-fetal medicine specialists and genetic counselors help you understand the life-limiting condition and potential outcomes.

You’re assigned a care navigator. They’re your first point of contact, and they work with your care team members. We coordinate your care and help you make informed decisions about your birth and your baby’s care, including pain and symptom management.

You regularly visit your obstetrician (OB) or midwife throughout your pregnancy to check how you and your baby are doing. You may have additional ultrasounds or other tests to help us determine how to best care for your baby during labor and delivery.

Labor and delivery

You get compassionate, expert care from doctors and nurses who will know about your baby’s diagnosis when you arrive. Our team honors your wishes for labor and delivery and helps you create memories with your baby after birth. We help you do what’s important to you and allow you and your family to spend time with your baby.

Depending on the diagnosis and their condition at birth, your baby may be cared for in the intensive care nursery. We provide as much medical intervention as you prefer and what you have communicated to your doctor before birth. Our labor and delivery team doesn’t do any procedures for you or your baby without your permission.

Home

We help you make special arrangements if you can take your baby home. Nurses may come to your home to help you understand how to care for your baby’s special needs after leaving the hospital.

We connect you to resources like home or hospice care and final arrangements if needed. Our social workers ensure you and other family members get supportive services such as behavioral health, grief support groups, and spiritual care as part of your transition home.

Continuing care with perinatal bereavement support

Our perinatal bereavement counselors check in with you in the weeks and months following your hospital discharge. We make sure you’re processing grief in a healthy way and have the tools you need to continue to heal. We’ll also invite you to our annual remembrance ceremony, where parents who have experienced perinatal loss come to honor their baby.

Penn Medicine has one of the country’s most comprehensive perinatal palliative care programs. As experienced, compassionate providers, we believe every life has value, no matter how brief.

We relieve any of your baby’s discomfort with expert medical care and provide a supportive environment for you and your family. Our team strives to help you experience hope, healing, and support during this unexpected and difficult circumstance.