ABCnews.com Conjoined twins, Andrew and Garette Stancombe were born on April 10. Doctors said it was too medically risky to separate them, since they share a heart and a liver. These twins are staying together.
Parents Michelle Van Horn and Kody Stancombe have decided to keep their newborn conjoined twins together, after doctors told them that separating the boys would mean losing one or both .
Andrew and Garette Stancombe are joined from the breastbone to the bellybutton and share a heart and liver.
Van Horn calls the twins her "miracle babies."
"They'll continue to fight until it's their time. We will love them and cherish them until that moment and continue even after," Van Horn, of Indiana, Penn., told WPXI.
The parents, who are both 25 years old, found out about the unusual pregnancy at the end of Van Horn's first trimester. Doctors warned that it would be tough.
Conjoined twins occur once every 200,000 live births, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. They have a survival rate of between 5% and 25%. Many are stillborn, and others die a few hours after delivery.
ABCnews.com Andrew and Garette are joined from the breastbone to the belly button, but their parents are not planning to separate them. The boys have been released from the hospital and are doing well. "It was difficult hearing. I was scared and nervous," Van Horn remembered.
But against all the odds, the boys entered the world on April 10. They are healthy—breathing, eating and sleeping just like any other newborn. They didn't need much hospital care and were given the okay to go home four days after birth.
Van Horn and Stancombe aren't new to parenting. They already have a 23-month old boy named Ryan Stancombe. But these babies are a different kind of challenge.
For clothes, the parents snap two different outfits together. Van Horn says giving the kids a bath and changing their diapers is a two-person task.
But the mom says the trouble is worth it.
"[The best part is] being able to hold them and hear them cry and know they're here with me. Just seeing their eyes open and listening to them is just amazing to me," Van Horn told CBS.
Last Wednesday, another set of conjoined twins were released from their Dallas, Texas hospital to a local inpatient rehabilitation center. 9-month-old Owen and Emmett Ezel were joined at the abdomen at birth and shared a liver and intestines. They were separated during a surgery last August.
But there's no guarantee that babies who share a heart will survive.
Van Horn says she's living on "pins and needles."
"They could be with us here now, and in the next second be gone. A month down the road they could be gone. They could turn into teenagers," Van Horne said. "We don't know and that's the difficulty."
With News Wire Services
Source : http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/conjoined-twin-boys-won-separated-pennsylvania-parents-article-1.1769939
