Conjoined twins Faith and Hope / Picture: A Current Affair Source: Channel 9
THERE is hope and faith in the hearts of proud Sydney parents Renee Young and Simon Howie, but more than anything there is love.
The couple's newborn twin daughters are just six days old but already a medical miracle, born with separate, identical faces and separate brains in a single skull, and sharing the same body.
Faith and Hope share the same body, heart and brain stem / Picture: Woman's Day/womansday.com.au Source: Supplied
The two girls, aptly named Faith and Hope, arrived last Thursday after a short labour, with Ms Young first being taken to Blacktown Hospital before being rushed by ambulance to Westmead Children's Hospital.
For the full story and more photos of the twins and their family, CLICK HERE
Renee Young and Simon Howie with Faith and Hope and Tracey Grimshaw / Picture: A Current Affair Source: Channel 9
Faith and Hope are the result of an extremely rare condition known as disrosopus, where a baby is born with two faces.
Fewer than 40 human disrosopus cases are known to have been born. Even fewer survived beyond birth.
The couple said even though the baby only had one body, they still refered to them as their beautiful baby twins.
"I think they're beautiful and Simon thinks they're beautiful so really that's all that matters," Ms Young said in an interview with A Current Affair.
Renee Young and Simon Howie / Picture: A Current Affair Source: Channel 9
The parents, who already had seven children together prior to the girls' arrival, discovered the abnormality during pregnancy but decided against an abortion.
"I would say, if I only get two days with the baby, I only get two days with the baby, at least I have some time with it," Ms Young said.
But the couple are confident they will spend far more time with their newborn girls than that.
"A little luck, a little bit of faith, a bit of hope, hopefully we'll come out the other side, as long as they're fighters and they keep fighting, everything will be OK," Mr Young said.
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists president Michael Permezel said conjoined twins were extremely rare.
Renee Young with her conjoined twins Faith and Hope / Picture: A Current Affair Source: Channel 9
About one in 30,000-50,000 pregnancies produce a conjoined twin, but just one in 200,000 makes it to birth.
"It is due to the incomplete splitting of the embryo," Professor Permezel said. "When the embryo splits earlier, you end up with identical twins, but when it partially splits, which is usually a bit later, you end up with a conjoined situation."
Maternal foetal medicine specialist Dr Glenn Gardener, an expert in complicated pregnancies, said conjoined twins were most often joined at the chest or abdomen.
"Being joined at the head is the rarest," he said.
Dr Gardener said it was hard to predict the long-term outlook for Hope and Faith.
"Having two bodies, where one heart is doing the job of pumping blood around both of them, would be much more dangerous because of the likelihood of heart failure," he said.
"The physical structures in the chest are probably consistent with a single person, but how the neurology works and how the brain is connected - that is really hard to determine whether they will function normally."
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