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trying to accept the strange reality that we were going to have two babies but only one surviving child.
    At thirteen weeks, we learned that the twins were boys. Ross reminded me of our deal from the first night we met:I would choose names for our sons. I resolved that their first names would be simply ones I liked, and that their middle names would come from my brothers: Thomas Ethan for Baby A, and Callum Mark for Baby B. (It wasn’t until Callum was three months old that we realized his name sounded like an appetizer at an Italian restaurant; we dressed him as calamari for his first Halloween.)
    At fourteen weeks, I was referred to a new doctor, Alfred Khoury. Dr. Khoury was the medical director and president of the Inova Fairfax Hospital Medical Executive Committee. My mother worked at the Inova health-care system, and asked him personally to take care of me. “I will treat her like my own daughter,” he told my mom in an email.
    Dr. Khoury is a white-haired, fatherly man with a straight-talking but kind and patient manner. He was not only the president of the high-risk maternal-fetal practice, but he was also the president of the Medical Executive Committee of Inova Fairfax Hospital. He is not a man who shies away from responsibilities, and I felt that I could trust him.
    Dr. Khoury explained that a selective termination was not impossible, though we had been told it was. He knew of a place in Baltimore that specialized in complex twin pregnancies, and suggested that we meet with them to learn about our options.
    And so at sixteen weeks we found ourselves talking to two specialists at the University of Maryland’s Center for Maternal and Fetal Care in Baltimore: Dr. Christopher R. Harman, director of the Center for Advanced Fetal Care; and Dr. Ahmet Baschat, director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, who would later become director of the Center for Fetal Therapy at Johns Hopkins.
    I knew from reading about the Center for Advanced Fetal Care that they’d had a lot of experience with complicated, andin some cases experimental, procedures; they’d been doing it for over thirty years. It seemed amazing to me what doctors were able to do to tiny fetuses in the womb. At the center they were able to perform surgeries in utero, including things like laser surgery, blood transfusions, fetal heart failure treatment—they could even insert a little balloon into a tiny baby’s trachea to aid in lung growth. (The balloon is inserted at around twenty-six to twenty-nine weeks and then taken out at thirty-two weeks so that, once born, the baby can scream and breathe all on its own.)
    On a video about the center on its website, Dr. Harman said something that stuck with me: “We’re constantly reminded that pregnancy can turn out well, regardless of risk factors.”Well, here we were, with risk factors. We were desperate to hear what Drs. Harman and Baschat would say, especially if it included something about things “turning out well.”
    First we met with Dr. Harman. He explained that Baby A, now known as Thomas, could pose a risk to Baby B, Callum. We learned that in some cases, mono-di twins share some blood vessels—a condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. That meant that my blood flowed to one of the babies, and then the blood flowed from that baby to the second baby rather than directly from me. If our twins had TTTS, and Thomas died in utero, which was a distinct possibility, it could kill Callum or leave him with cerebral palsy due to a loss of blood pressure. Not only was a selective termination possible; it was something that would protect Callum’s brain function and ensure his survival. But as ever, it was our choice.
    Dr. Harman explained how it would work. Cord occlusion, as it’s called, would involve a metal tweezer-like instrument being inserted through my belly, where it would then grasp and cauterize the umbilical cord. This would cut off the blood