It is our natural born instinct as mothers to feed and nurture our children, so when the time comes to stop these feeds and the act of nurturing, we sometimes cannot accept it willingly. It’s a mother’s need to feed her child.
The decision to sedate, withdraw or withhold life sustaining treatment and to allow natural death is sometimes something that has been coming. It’s usually done when you have exhausted all options and the parents often realise that it’s in the child best interest to help them not suffer anymore. A parent can only see a child suffer so much, then they would prefer it to end, on behalf of the child’s ease.
However, stopping feeds is something quite unnatural, because eating and drinking is one of our primary needs, and you would think that even in the process of dying it would be necessary. We as parents tend to worry when our children don’t eat enough, because they aren’t getting their nutrients in and they’ll lose weight and go hungry, and just because a child is dying, doesn’t mean that thinking goes away. Or at least for parents and caregivers. It’s the first step in realising that the time has arrived and that you need to let go.
