A conjoined twin with one body and two faces was born to an Australian couple who have welcomed the birth.
The twin has separate brains and identical faces but share a body, describing their girls as ‘little Aussie fighters’, a report said Monday.
Sydney couple Renee Young and Simon Howie came to knowat a 19-week ultrasound that their babies would be born with a rare condition called diprosopus, Woman’s Day magazine reported.
“Even though there is only one body, we call them our twins,” Howie told the magazine. “To us, they are our girls and we love them.”
Young gave birth last Thursday by emergency caesarean, some six weeks early. The girls were named ‘Hope’ and ‘Faith’, who share one unusually-shaped skull with duplicated facial features and separate brains joined at the stem. They have one set of limbs and organs. They are in intensive care at the Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney’s west where they have amazed doctors with their progress.
“They are breathing perfectly on their own and feeding,” Howie said, adding that they had their first bath on Sunday night. “They are little Aussie fighters.”
The implications of their condition were not fully clear, but they were being monitored closely in hospital. “We have no idea how long they will be in hospital,” said Howie, who has seven other children in his family with Young.
“I want people to know about it. It does happen. It might be very rare, but it does happen,” she added. Sitting in the intensive care ward with her newborns, Young said that doctors had told her they didn’t know what the future held for her girls.
“We are still in unknown territory,” she said. “I’m proud as punch,” Howie said. “Just to see them come this far when all the odds were against us to be honest.”