I wish both my twins were pregnant

Your poignant email serves as a reminder that happiness and sorrow can coexist in a swirl of dizzy emotion. That’s what you’re feeling now — and I find it rather moving. This love for both daughters and realisation that you are ‘blessed’ is a ray of light.

Your emotional confusion prompts the mental note that not everything can be put right. When our children are babies, we feed and soothe them, and as we learn little tricks of distraction (‘Look, here’s your pink rabbit!’) we can turn tears into smiles.

As they grow, we cuddle away their nightmares, comfort them when friends are mean, listen to their moans about school.

But, as every parent knows, when the teens arrive you realise that all your wishing, hoping and loving will not protect your children from the world outside. You’ll try, of course.

And just as you can’t apply a plaster to their broken hearts, you can’t be a fortress against the world. You can only trust that everything they learned from you in those early years will equip them to cope with life’s problems.

It sounds as if you have achieved that triumphantly. Your daughters are ‘close’ with ‘no malice or jealousy’ — their love as strong as ever, whatever happens. So at this point, Anna-Marie, what matters is that you harness your feelings — otherwise you won’t be able to help both daughters as in the past.

I understand how you feel because I, too, experienced helplessness and anguish over the happiness of one of mine and the frustration of the other.

My daughter struggled to get pregnant, while my son and daughterin-law had no problems. All I could do was stay strong, quiet and (in truth) whisper many prayers. In the end, my daughter was lucky because the IVF worked, but the birth was traumatic.

In 2012, amazingly, two grandchildren were born — but I take none of this for granted. Like you, I learned (yet again) that we mums can’t work miracles.

In fact, that lesson applies to all people. You can curse the hand you’ve been given, but you have to accept it and go on with the game as best you can.

All you can do now is keep hoping, continue to be that vital listening, supportive ear and encourage both daughters every step of the way. It won’t help either of them if you allow yourself to remain on your see-saw of emotion. Be steady. If things become harder for the daughter who so longs for a baby, you will be rock-solid.