Anchored in Hope

This episode of Difficult Conversations features Dr. Jessica Daigle, a board-certified pediatrician, NICU and pediatric hospitalist, and founder and CEO of Mom & Me, MD, joining Dr. Anthony Orsini and Liz Poret-Christ for a conversation about what families remember most in healthcare, not perfect outcomes, but how clinicians show up in the hardest moments. Jess opens with a core theme, medicine’s discomfort with silence, uncertainty, and pain, and how the pressure to “fix” everything can unintentionally deepen trauma. The discussion repeatedly returns to the idea that there are multiple patients in the NICU experience (baby, mother, father/partner), and that compassionate presence, transparency, and patient-centered communication can change how families carry grief, fear, and uncertainty.

Jess shares her personal path into NICU work, first through early fascination with neonatology, then through a personal experience, a traumatic miscarriage where she delivered her baby herself, and later a prolonged hospitalization and preterm birth of her son Liam. Those experiences reshaped her focus from “the baby only” to the whole family system, and helped inspire her work through Mom & Me, MD. She also highlights her devotional book Anchored in Hope for NICU parents, designed to support the emotional and spiritual toll alongside the medical journey. The episode closes with Jess reflecting on her first time delivering serious news as an attending, how hard it is to balance urgency, honesty, and empathy, and the lasting truth that even when outcomes are heartbreaking, families often remember and value the clinician who stayed present and helped them navigate with humanity.