Doctors gave the conjoined twins Calllie and Carter little chance of survival. But the girls taught her otherwise.
Boise – It’s not a given that Callie and Carter can celebrate their fifth birthday. The two girls from the US state of Idaho should only be a few days old – at least that was the prognosis of the doctors. Because Callie and Carter grew together from the rib cage. They are siamese twins.
Despite all the forecasts, the two girls survived the birth and celebrated their fifth birthday in May. Her mother, Chelsea Torres, documents the lives of the siblings on social media.
Doctors give Siamese twins only a short time to live – “It was a shock”
Chelsea Torres was eight weeks pregnant when doctors broke the shock news that she and her husband were expecting conjoined twins. She and the doctors assumed that the girls would have little chance of survival. Whether they would even survive the birth was completely unclear. They would either die then or at the latest a few days after birth, according to the doctors. “I was willing to bury my children the day they were born,” Chelsea told Britain’s Mirror magazine.
The girls would prove her wrong: Callie and Carter are fine and alert – and, like all children their age, keep their parents on their toes. However, this was not foreseeable when she was born. Days passed – and the twins lived on. “It was a shock to see them together, but I fell in love with them at first sight,” her mother recalls.
But with the girls surviving, Nick and Chelsea were faced with a tough question: Should they let the girls separate? The parents were under enormous pressure, as Papa Nick also remembers. “Mentally we weren’t prepared for it, we were extremely stressed.”
A team of doctors finally made the decision for them three days after the birth. Since Callie and Carter share important organs, an operation is too risky. Each of the girls would have only one leg, one pelvis and one kidney after the operation. A separation was therefore out of the question. There are still many unanswered questions about twins. Scientists in Tübingen therefore collect health data from twins for research purposes
Mother Chelsea documents the everyday life of the twins on social media
To date, Chelsea and Nick have not regretted that decision. Both girls are alive and well. And above all happy. Her mother documents the everyday life of the family and the twins on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. In addition to Callie and Carter, Nick and Chelsea have two sons, Jaysin and Mykah.
Many questions reach the mother of four via social media. She diligently answers her followers’ questions. Because with their accounts, Chelsea wants one thing above all: to create more attention and understanding for families like theirs.
Siamese twins also appear in the animal world. A two-headed, six-legged turtle has hatched in the United States. Another sensation was the birth of a two-headed snake in Villingen-Schwenningen (Baden-Württemberg).
Siamese twins
In the case of identical twins, if the fertilized egg cell does not completely divide into two separate embryos during early development, conjoined twins are formed. In some cases, the children are only superficially attached to each other by a skin bridge, often the adhesion goes so far that the siblings also share extremities or organs. How many Siamese twins there are in the world is not exactly recorded. The figures vary between a probability of 1:60,000 and 1:200,000. However, the chances of survival are usually very low, as a sad number proves: for every million Siamese twin births, only about one viable child is born.