When Medford writer Jane Roper found out she was pregnant in 2006, after a year and a half of in vitro fertilization, she was thrilled. She recalls, “You go so long thinking it’s not going to happen, and when it actually does, it’s like ‘Oh my God, my body can do this!’ It’s like Christmas morning.”

But six weeks later, that delight became tinged with “terror” when Roper learned she was carrying not one precious bundle of joy, but two. “The subconscious excitement and joy lasted half a second, then it was panic and disappointment,” she confesses. “It became a higher risk pregnancy, and I was nervous.”