She provides care to the smallest but mightiest patients and their families as a neonatologist
Age: 37
Nothing inconsequential happens at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It’s where the tiniest babies are given their best chance of survival, where seemingly minor events can lead to incomprehensible anguish or miraculous recoveries.
A neonatologist at the Stollery Children’s Hospital, Nicole Geddes Anderson provides pre- and post-operative care to premature babies and other babies born with complications that include heart defects.
An important non-medical aspect is caring for the parents, she explains. “We cultivate a sense of home because something as simple as holding your baby, singing to your baby, reading to them — these seemingly small things are a big deal.”
Anderson also serves as transport medical director of the Northern Alberta Neonatal program, leading a team of neonatal specialists working virtually with doctors and nurses in remote locations.
The support comes around, she says, recalling colleagues who helped her through her four-year residency, a neonatal perinatal medicine fellowship and life changes including the birth of her two children. Her patients and their families energize her.
Emily McTavish, whose son Mason was born 15 weeks premature at a mere 2 lbs. met Anderson the day Mason was born.
“I’ve been a registered nurse for 10 years and she’s unlike any doctor I have met,” she says. “I was supposed to be able to hold Mason for the first time four days after he was born but it was too dangerous. Even though she wasn’t on service Dr. Nicole came by on the fifth day and said ‘I’m not going home today until I see Mason with his mom and she’s holding him,’ and I got to hold him. It was lovely.”
Anderson says she’s only doing what’s right. “I’m just a mom who happens to have a pretty cool career.”
This article appears in the November-December 2026 issue of Edify
