And so we have to figure out how to move forward -- bearing these awesome losses and carrying this monumental knowledge. It's the sort of thing that can paralyze you -- and often does, at first. And then we slowly start to think again, to move again, and to trust again. It's not that you start to believe that the world is always fair or perfect or that "everything will be okay." But you start to remember the ways in which things are okay, and trust in your own ability to not merely survive, but also to make some sense out of all of this. Maybe you come to some acceptance of the limitations you or your child face. Maybe you search for ways to help other people in your shoes. Maybe you start to actually find value in this journey.

One thing is for certain. You will never be quite the same, again. But I would like to suggest that this journey leaves us altogether wiser, stronger, more tender and more human. And it is the lessons that we learn that we pass to our children.

I can remember in the weeks of my long hospitalization and during the early weeks after my girls were born -- struggling with the fact that in the course of one hour, I had gone from being professor/supervisor/therapist, to being helpless; hooked up to an IV and a fetal monitor, and completely disoriented. Above and beyond the shock, my identity, who I was, was hooked into my profession, my confidence in my ability to understand, to tolerate ambiguity (yes, I thought that I was very good at tolerating ambiguity!), and to cope. And there I lay, in a hospital bed -- more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life.

I remember being angry that the doctors weren't treating me like a peer. I remember being frustrated that they wouldn't (or more likely, couldn't) answer my never-ending questions. I remember having a terrible time figuring out where to put "Dr. Stein" when Mara was laying in a hospital bed, terrified of losing her babies.

But an interesting thing started to happen. My mixed feelings about actually having these babies started to disappear. My worries about whether I would be a good mom, whether I could put myself aside for them (all typical first-time parent worries, I know, but intense nonetheless) stopped being such concerns. One awful night, as I prayed that the reason I was having trouble breathing was because of a pulmonary embolism (They could treat me, right? I was resilient…) rather than a feared uterine infection (that would mean delivering the twins immediately…who knew what they could survive…), I realized that I would do anything that I could to protect these children. It was like a new part of me was born -- myself as "mother."

Once the twins were born, their first weeks were a total blur. That previously competent, confident "Dr. Stein" was really nowhere to be found. The sobbing woman standing over those warming beds, wishing she could breathe for her babies was unfamiliar. The gradual slipping away of my old self during the hospitalization seemed complete. It was hard to even imagine being the way I had been before. And then something surprising began to happen. I started to "wake up." But the person I woke up to was not the one who had gone to sleep. Two experiences (one with each of my new daughters) opened the door to the blending of my old self -- not quite as it was, and my new self -- not yet formed.