Siblings are God’s wonderful gifts. Our first friend, our confidante, someone who annoys us, yet someone we really cannot do without. They are the ones we get into trouble with, they are the ones who cover up for us in front of our parents, and they are the ones who boss us around like it’s their job. Thank God for siblings!
When it comes to siblings, twins are even more fun. Two people of the same age simply means double the fun and double the trouble. You can just imagine the kind of mischief they will be up to. Jokes apart, twins have a very special bond with each other. It is said that they have an innate sense of understanding about what the other twin is feeling.
Often we see twins together almost always. They study together, play together, have the same group of friends, and mostly hang out together. Even if they do a number of things together, they are still their own personalities. Each twin has a different personality as compared to the other twin and this is what makes each of them unique. It might be the way they speak, the way they dress, their attitudes, their style of dressing, and so many other aspects. Twins might look similar, but they are most certainly two different personalities.
Conjoined twins are twins who happen to be joined by bodies as they develop in the uterus. Usually, such twins are surgically separated once they are born, but in some cases, the doctors have their hands tied if surgery poses any risks to the lives of either of the twins. In such cases, these twins have to stay joined.
Over the years, there have been many conjoined twins who have made headlines. Some of them were eventually separated through surgery while some of them continued to live as conjoined twins for the rest of their lives. Here’s a story about conjoined twins who were finally separated from each other when they were 7 months old.
Lexi and Sydney were born in March 2001 to their mother Emily Stark. Unlike other twins, these two were very special. They were born, joined at the base of their spine.
Even as they were born, the conjoined twins were considered a medical miracle and their story was covered by television and printed across a number of newspapers both local and national as well.
Twins are rare cases of births with a probability of one in nearly 200,000 births. Twins face a number of complications as they develop in the womb of their mother. They lack enough space, there might be complications such as the umbilical cord wrapping around one or both fetuses, or the development of one fetus might be at the cost of the other one’s life. Even if they survive the risks in utero, twins are delivered pre-term as the womb cannot accommodate two full-term fetuses at once. Pre-term deliveries can be risky and can lead to stillbirths and an underdeveloped fetus. And, the risk is even greater in case of conjoined twins.
The fact that Lexi and Sydney were alive and kicking after their birth was a miracle and something their family and doctors were thankful for. Of course, the hard part was not yet over. Next came the decision as to whether to go through with the surgery that would separate them. Finally, after much deliberation, the parents of the twins decided to get them separated.
Lexi and Sydney became two individuals when they were 7 months. The surgery was successful! It did not stop there. Lexi and Sydney were the first conjoined twins to be separated successfully in Colorado.
For Lexi and Sydney, life did not really change all that much from their perspective since surgery happened when they were very little. The girls are now 17 years old. They are teenagers.
The twins are quite active and doing extremely well for themselves. In fact, Lexi has joined the Colorado Early College as a junior and she is an excellent hockey player. She even plays for Arapahoe Warriors Midget team. Sydney, on the other hand, prefers rugby to hockey and is a junior at Chaparral High School. Sixteen years later, the twins who were joined at the base of their spine have grown into completely different personalities with vastly differing hobbies and interests.
Their mom, Emily Stark went on to say that their personalities are so different even when behind the wheel. While Lexi is the girl with the ‘need for speed’, Sydney is the careful one. She is meticulous and careful while driving, putting safety first.
Emily still remembers the day she found out that she was going to have conjoined twins. It was her doctor who told her after he kept going over one section of her stomach. Finally, he told her that her twins were joined. Emily and her husband went back home to begin their research on conjoined twins and the results were not very encouraging. In most cases, one of two things happened. Either the babies never made it through the surgery or they remained conjoined until the last day in their lives. The Starks were disheartened and quite worried.
Finally, the twins were born in 2001 and by some miracle, not only did they survive the birth, they also made it through the surgery much to the delight of their parents. They are no two strong and independent personalities living their life to the fullest.
The twins often get asked who is older. Just to level it up, the twins say that Lexi is older. This is actually not true. The twins were conjoined at the time of birth and it was a Cesarean section, so the doctor pulled out both of them at once.
