Twins with one body, two faces ‘little fighters’

An Australian couple have welcomed conjoined twins who have separate brains and identical faces but share a body, describing their girls as "little Aussie fighters", a report said.

Sydney couple Renee Young and Simon Howie learned at a 19-week scan that their babies would be born with a rare condition called diprosopus, reported Woman’s Day magazine.

“Even though there is only one body, we call them our twins,” Mr Howie told the magazine.

“To us, they are our girls and we love them.”

Ms Young gave birth last Thursday by emergency caesarean, some six weeks early.

Named Hope and Faith, the baby girls share one unusually-shaped skull with duplicated facial features and separate brains.

They have one set of limbs and organs.

They are in intensive care at Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital where they have impressed doctors with their progress.

“They are breathing perfectly on their own and feeding,” Mr Howie said, adding that they had their first bath on Sunday night.

“They are little Aussie fighters.”

Woman’s Day said the girls were conjoined in an extremely rare way and the implications of their condition was not fully clear, but they were being monitored closely in the hospital.

“We have no idea how long they will be in hospital,” said Mr Howie, who has seven other children with Ms Young.

“We just want to bring them home, happy and healthy to make our family a little bit bigger and a bit more chaotic.”

Woman’s Day said that there had only been 35 cases in which babies with diprosopus — meaning two faces — were born joined in a similar way as the girls. None survived.

Speaking on the Channel 9 programme maternal foetal specialist Dr Greg Kesby warned the couple that even simple tasks will prove difficult for the twins.

“I think one of the biggest risks to this baby, in terms of surviving, is its ability to breathe on its own,” Dr Kesby said.

“I think there are going to be a lot of challenges afterwards related to the way the brains develop.

“That’s going to pose you lots of problems. That is the reality. The bub comes out and after a little while struggles, you’ve got to have that discussion, how far do you take things.”

Despite problems ahead, Ms Young and Mr Howie are just happy their girls are alive and well.

“I think they’re beautiful and Simon thinks they’re beautiful so really that’s all that matters,” Ms Young said.