Rare twins born in Australia

Sydney: An Australian couple have welcomed the birth of conjoined twins who have separate brains and identical faces but share a body, describing their girls as “little Aussie fighters”, a report said on Monday.

Sydney couple Renee Young and Simon Howie learned at a 19-week ultrasound that their babies would be born with a rare condition called diprosopus, Woman’s Day magazine reported.

“Even though there is only one body, we call them our twins,” Mr Howie told the magazine.

“To us, they are our girls and we love them,” he said.

Ms Young gave birth last Thursday by emergency caesarean, some six weeks early. Named Hope and Faith, the girls share one unusually-shaped skull with duplicated facial features and separate brains joined at the stem. They have one set of limbs and organs.

They are in intensive care at the Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney's west where they have impressed doctors with their progress.

“They are breathing perfectly on their own and feeding,” Mr Howie said, adding that they had their first bath on Sunday night.

“They are little Aussie fighters,” he said.

Woman’s Day said the girls were conjoined in an extremely rare way and the implications of their condition was not fully clear.