Twins with 1 body, 2 heads die after 20 days
The conjoined twins born with one body and two heads in India have died after battling to survive for a remarkable 20 days, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.
And tragically their mother Urmila Sharma, 28, decided she couldn't bear to meet her babies at all.
The father Subhash, 32, said: “The news did not come as a shock but we were still devastated. They were very special babies.”
“Even though doctors had told us that they had minimal chances of survival we hoped they'd live,” he said.
“I wanted to raise them and for our daughter to have sisters but God had a different plan. The fact they survived for 20 days was even a miracle.”
The conjoined twins were born by C-section at Cygnus JK Hindu Hospital in Sonipat, Haryana, in northern India, on March 13th.
They weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces, but were born with one body, two heads, two necks, two spines and two separate esophagi and tracheas. But they had only one heart, stomach and lung each.
Dr. Shikha Malik, who delivered the babies, said at first that while one baby was sleeping, one was crying.
After two days the babies were transferred to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital (AIIMS) in Delhi, and were under close observation in the neonatal intensive care unit by some of the country’s top doctors.
“In the end their heart was too weak,” Dr. Minu Bajpai, pediatric surgeon in charge of the babies while they were at AIIMS, said.
“They suffered respiratory problems from the moment they arrived with us, and they just seemed to deteriorate as each day passed. In the end it was their heart that gave up and they died of heart failure.”
Mother Urmila, who already has a three-year-old daughter Shalini, chose to not meet her babies while they were alive.