Table 2.

Qualitative Findings

Theme	Category	Exemplar quotes pertaining to children with LTI and healthy siblings
Balancing beliefs	Primacy of relationships	“…we are mothers, we are not quitters.”
		“Samantha is the focus…they know that. We have to get through this stage and get her a new heart.”
		“The most important thing is being her Dad and having fun with her [ill child].”
		“It's a full-time job making sure he's [sibling] OK.”
		“Sometimes I feel like I am abandoning them [siblings].”
		“They all [healthy siblings] need me.”
	In-depth knowledge of each child	“If she's [ill child] ok, then I'm ok.”
		“I study her [ill child].”
		“I told her [sibling]…you're not any less important. Your life is not going to stop because of this situation.”
Parenting triage	Essential support	“When the house is on fire, you don't worry about the wash.”
		“I have to be with the baby [ill child] no matter what.”
		“We decided to home school the older kids so the baby [ill child] wouldn't get more infections.”
		“I'm parenting them [siblings] from the sidelines. I have more of a grandparent role.”
		“They have to miss school because we don't have somebody there that I can say, ‘Can you take care of my kids?’…They come with me because they know I'm lonely here with the baby. We are tight and need to be together. My daughter told me ‘Mommy, I'm going to miss you.’”
	Relational support	“I'm constantly evaluating quality of life. Is the baby (ill child] going to hate me when he is older because I made these decisions for him?”
		“My husband will kangaroo with Daniel [ill child] when he is in town.”
		“After the hospitalizations, we have to reclaim a stake in our family…We have to reintroduce the kids [ill child and healthy siblings] to each other.”
		“I'm more patient with them…reassuring them about Dylan [ill child] and communicating with them about him.”
The toll it takes	Individual	“It breaks my heart to leave him [ill child], especially being sick.”
		“She's a baby, she might not know if I'm here. If she were older, it would be different.”
		“I was going to law school. I was running marathons. Then I got pregnant with her and it was over. Now it's really over. It's not what I expected, but it's what's expected of me.”
		“If we had more time and resources to devote, we would have done something different with Charles [sibling]. He might be taking college courses now and this is one of those trade-offs that breaks my heart … I will probably be kicking myself for the rest of my life, God forbid, because I think Charles needed more challenge, academic excitement, and we couldn't pull it off.”
		“The boys [siblings] got gypped.”
	Dyadic	“Is she [sibling] going to hate us because we can't go to her soccer games because he can't be around people? I think about her quality of life, too.”
	Family	“Nobody is getting what they need and they won't be for a while.”

LTI, life-threatening illness.