It feels strange to be writing this during the month that the twins turn 16 months old and six months after I finished part one.

It feels like this experience should have been easier to put into words, but it hasn’t been. I have a lot of conflicting emotions about the way that the twins came into the world.

I ended the first part of this story by saying that their birth was “the craziest whirlwind of our lives” but in reality, that was only the beginning. Here we are, 16 months later, and things still feel pretty chaotic a lot of the time. There hasn’t been a lot of time to digest, to sit with the complicated feelings I have about the first 24 hours of their lives.

I did not get to spend any significant time with the twins until a couple of hours after they were born, and I did not get to hold them until more than 12 hours after birth. Like Addie’s birth, immediately after surgery, I was taken to a post-op wing for observation. But unlike Addie’s birth, there was no beautiful bundled baby brought to my side for me to hold and marvel over. There were no family members aside from Tim who were allowed back to share smiles and hugs and happy tears. It was only Tim and I, waiting to hear more about the state of the girls.

Once my observation period post-surgery had ended and the girls were stable, I was wheeled still bed-bound to the NICU, where we had our first family picture taken, our two precious babies in their incubators and covered in wires, Tim and I with masks covering our faces. When I look at that picture, I can hear the room—the constant beeps and chimes of the monitors. And I can’t help but feel sad when I compare it to our first photo with Addie, where we are beaming brightly and holding our baby in the operating room.

The girls were not stable enough to be held, so after some time, I was returned to the postpartum room. The first thing I remember seeing was the empty bassinet that was left there. I knew there would be no baby joining us in that bassinet, no laps around the L&D wing wheeling it through the halls with nurses oohing and cooing over the precious new life it held. No looking over from the hospital bed and seeing Tim reaching down into that bassinet to pick up at a swaddled baby bundle. It felt cruel that the bassinet had been left there to remind me of the postpartum experience that I would not get to have. “Could you please take it out of here?” I asked one of the nurses. I don’t remember much else about that nurse, only that she was very kind and gracious and that I knew she understood.

Eventually we were able to get some sleep, and in the morning we were able to return to the NICU and hold our babies for the first time.

First I met Amelia. A NICU nurse gently lifted her from her incubator and handed her to me, and I was careful not to disturb the wires surrounding her tiny body. I gave her gentle forehead kisses through my mask and spoke to her, hoping she would recognize my voice from her time in my belly.

Next, I handed Amelia to Tim so that he could have his turn to hold her, and the nurse brought Ivy over to me. Again I snuggled her as gently as possible. A little later, I even got to do some skin-to-skin with her. I felt her tiny, warm body against my chest and the movements of her fingers twitching against my collar bone.

It wasn’t how I pictured it.

It was beautiful.

But/And

I was scared of the unknown.

I was wistful for the newborn experience we wouldn’t get to have.

Yoga and meditation instructor Kathryn Nicolai has said that sensitivity, that recognition of the subtlety within your body, is built with practice. When you begin meditation, often you may not feel much—and that’s okay.

I liken this experience to that of Ivy and Amelia’s birth. I am still trying to pick apart the layers that make up that experience. It feels like a knotted ball of yarn. Whenever I try to pull at the “joy” string, to bring it close to my heart, the “grief” and “fear” strings come with it. Often I find myself putting down the ball because it is too tangled. Too messy to work through.

But with time, I am getting better, better at looking at the complicated experience. At simply letting myself look.

At letting it be what it was, and still finding space in my heart to hold it.