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.
The two girls, aptly named Faith and Hope, arrived last Thursday after a short labor, with Young first being taken to Blacktown Hospital before being rushed by ambulance to Westmead Children’s Hospital.
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 referred 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,” Young said in an interview with A Current Affair.
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,” Young said.
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