Separated and doing just fine, our amazing Siamese twins
A MOTHER whose conjoined twins were separated at just a few hours old spoke yesterday of her joy at their ‘amazing’ recovery.
A life-threatening blockage in Rosie and Ruby Formosa’s shared intestine meant the girls had to be taken for emergency surgery the day after their birth.
The delicate operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London – one of the world’s leading centres for the procedure – took five hours, and was so successful that the sisters left hospital just two weeks later and are now ‘thriving’ at home with their parents Angela and Daniel Formosa. Mrs Formosa, 32, said of the girls, who are now two months old: ‘They are really well, they are putting on weight. They are normal bubbly babies who are starting to smile and cry when they want something.’
A scan before their birth revealed the babies were joined and had a low chance of survival. After a ‘textbook’ pregnancy with her first child, Lily, now five, Mrs Formosa said the discovery was a shock.
The mother- of-three, from Bexleyheath, Kent, said: ‘Between 16 and 20 weeks we found that they were joined. I was shocked and I felt sad. We didn’t know what to expect until they were born – the doctors could not tell where they were connected.’
It was decided that the girls would be delivered early, at 34 weeks, by Caesarean section at University College Hospital in London. It turned out they were joined at the abdomen and they were transferred to Great Ormond Street for surgery.
Mrs Formosa discharged herself from hospital the day after her Caesarean so she could be by her babies’ bedside as they recovered.
Paediatric surgeon Professor Agostino Pierro, who led the surgical team, said: ‘We are delighted with the outcome of the operation. The babies will need further treatment in the future but we expect that they will both be able to lead happy and normal lives.
‘They are now able to feed normally, they are at home with their parents and they are thriving.’
Mrs Formosa said she and her husband, a 36-year-old taxi driver, were ‘happy and relieved’ to take them home, and were ‘incredibly grateful’ to the doctors at Great Ormond Street.
‘When I was pregnant they were saying that the survival chances were quite low,’ she said. ‘For them to have been operated on and doing so well – it is amazing.’