The authors describe the challenges to nurturing reflective practices in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)--an environment in which life and death hang in fragile balance and where the need to defend against unbearable realities is natural, even an adaptive response. Working as consultants to this acute setting, the authors describe how they pay close attention to staff members' experiences of the parents and babies, encouraging them to reflect upon the feelings generated by these encounters. This article illustrates how the consultants' own experiences help them understand those of the staff and increase tolerance for reflective processes in NICU staff members.