Callie and Carter Torres
A mother who was advised to abort her conjoined twins but who opted to give them a chance at life has just been told that they will probably survive and may be candidates for separation.
The Daily Mail is reporting on the case of 23 year-old Chelsea Torres and her husband Nick, 22, who were told in June that the twins Chelsea is carrying are conjoined and probably would not survive birth. The babies, who are both girls, appear to be joined at the chest, stomach and pelvis.
“The doctor just told us they babies were stuck together,” Chelsea said about the moment she was told the news. “It was really emotional, I started crying. I don’t even know what to think and I’m still surprised. It’s not something I can describe. It was just like shock.”
But the nightmare was just getting started.
“I had a few doctors that told me I was going to miscarry every week. They told me they weren’t going to survive.”
The Torres were advised to consider abortion, but the couple refused to give up on their little girls.
Instead, they packed their bags and moved 1,400 miles from Blackfoot, Idaho to Houston, Texas where both Chelsea and the babies could receive the necessary care.
Their courage and determination paid off. An MRI scan at 20 weeks revealed that both babies were healthy and are now expected to survive.
Additional testing revealed that they are omphalo-ischiopagus twins, meaning they share a lower stomach and lower pelvic area.
On the family’s Facebook page, in an October 10 post, Chelsea confirmed that the girls have separate diaphragms and gallbladders and what appears to be two livers that are fused together.
“They share a portion of intestines, they have one functioning kidney each, one leg each, and share one bladder. Separation isn’t 100% because we cannot see how their pelvises are, whether they are two small ones put together or one big one,” she writes. “Their spines come down close to each other but he [the surgeon] is 90% sure the vital nerves on their spinal cord do not connect; if they do, we cannot separate.”
However, the surgeon saw nothing alarming in the tests and does not believe the girls are in danger of death either before or after birth.
“Our next step is good OBGYN care and waiting for the echocardiogram in six weeks and another MRI in nine weeks,” Chelsea wrote.
The babies, who are named Callie and Carter, are due on February 21 but will probably be delivered early by Caesarean section.
The Torres are posting about their experience on Facebook and are doing whatever they can to raise awareness about conjoined twins in order to give hope to people in the same situation.
They have also started a fundraising page in an attempt to raise money to cover the costs of the babies’ care.
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