I was speechless for the first time....

Parents are ALWAYS thinking that - tho they rarely verbalize it.

I work in NICU. I say things like:

"Most babies of this gestation require a lot of support in the beginning, but do well." or

"Babies born this early have a hard time. She is stable and responding well to treatment at this time. We're doing our best to help her & we'll keep you updated." or

"Your son is very ill, the ventilator is at it's highest setting & he's on 100% oxygen. If his saturations drop again, I can't turn anything else up to help him." - and have the doc high-tail it into the room.

That sounded good to me. Just be honest with them. If the risk is low that the patient is going to die, and that they will get better, then you can say that. "We believe that with further treatment at X facility, your son will make a full recovery" (or partial recovery if that's the case, and explain to them what they can expect: permanent peg tube, etc).

If it's truly dicey, and you don't know if he will live or die, then what you said sounded good, along with: "Death is not something we can predict. Your son is in critical condition at this time, but our hope is that he can make a full recovery with further care." (if you're expecting that; if there's already talk that it's not looking good, then just say "your son has a tough road ahead of him, and we're really not sure what to expect. We're going to have to take it day by day."

I always try to give the families hope in some way, not false hope, but hope (even if my patient dies). I'm always clear that their family member is critical, if they are, but then say what progress they made in the past couple of days, and what our expectations of treatment are. Families really like a time aspect...for instance, if I expect my patient to be on the vent for only 2 days as opposed to 2 weeks, I usually say that, but always qualify it by saying "we can't know for sure, but our hope is X since they have shown us X today" etc.