Separated twins now preparing for first day at school
A HEARTBREAKING diagnosis left Angela and Daniel Formosa wondering just how long their two baby twins would survive.
Doctors told the couple that their daughters, Rosie and Ruby Formosa were born joined at the abdomen, sharing part of the intestine, and had very little chance of surviving.
But surgeons at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) carried out an emergency operation to separate the girls after they were born in 2012, and the youngsters are now preparing to go to school for the first time.
The four-year-olds, from Bexleyheath in Kent, are “very excited” to be starting school like their big sister, Lily, nine, Mrs Formosa said.
“Four years ago it wasn’t in my mind that this would ever happen,” she said. “When I was
I didn’t think I’d ever see their first day at school, Angela Formosa, mother of twin girls Rosie and Ruby.
pregnant I didn’t think I’d ever see their first day at school, so it is really amazing and all thanks to Gosh really.”
Mrs Formosa, 35, said it was “heartbreaking” when she discovered the girls had the rare medical condition – it accounts for one in every 200,000 live births.
The girls were born at University College Hospital in London by caesarean section when Mrs Formosa was 34 weeks’ pregnant.
The operation to separate them took five hours and the girls were well enough to go home when they were just three weeks old.
The Formosa family are supporting Gosh’s charity through it’s Back To School Campaign – which is celebrating children who are able to go to school due to care at the hospital as well as raising funds.