The girls were joined at the chest and abdomen, which can be a dangerous place for conjoined twins to fuse because the heart and other vital organs can be affected, Treadwell said. "Giving people false hope is not particularly helpful for anyone."Īnother ultrasound and a later MRI showed that the twins each had their own arms and legs. "I tend to always try to be hopeful, but I also have to be realistic," said Treadwell, who also is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan. Their doctor referred them to a high-risk obstetrician, and within 24 hours, the Irwins were in Ann Arbor, meeting with Treadwell at Michigan Medicine. So they said their hearts were breaking for us … but there wasn't anything they could do." "They had never seen anything like that before. "Especially because the statistics are not good. "It kind of felt like the worst news you could receive, you know?" Alyson said. "It may have been 5 minutes, but it seemed like forever," before the doctor came into the room, Phil said. "That's when we found out they were conjoined." The ultrasound technician moved the wand around on Alyson's belly, but then quickly excused herself to get the doctor.
None of their previous prenatal doctor's visits gave them any inkling that they were having twins or that they might be conjoined. "I thought we were just pregnant with a big old boy, so that's why I even bought a boy onesie and everything for a boy," Alyson said. Still, Alyson was pretty convinced her hunch was right. They agreed they wouldn't find out the gender, and instead wanted to let it be a surprise at delivery. They were eager to see ultrasound images of their growing baby. The Irwins looked forward to the 20-week prenatal appointment, set for Feb. "I thought we were going to have a boy," she said. "It felt different" than her previous pregnancy, when she carried Kennedy, who's now a spunky 3-year-old who loves animals and playing on her backyard jungle gym. Something about the pregnancy was different, but Alyson, 33, who works in the agricultural industry, selling feed and fertilizer to farmers, couldn't pinpoint what it was. More: Michigan conjoined twins beat the odds the moment they were born: Here's how rare they are A concerning ultrasound Their mom, Alyson Irwin, smiled, and said, "They're doing great."īut neither Alyson nor Phil could ever have dreamed they'd be able to say that about their twins when they first discovered they were conjoined in late February 2019. "Other than taking our word for it, you would almost never know that they were conjoined," said their father, Phil Irwin on a warm mid-September day. She looked up at her big sister, Kennedy, who was running across the lawn, and said, "Sissy."
Just a few weeks after the first-of-its-kind surgery, Sarabeth sucked on a pacifier, leaning against her father's leg on a blanket in the grass outside their house in Petersburg, about 10 miles north of the Ohio state line in Monroe County.Īmelia spotted a cellphone on the ground and began to crawl for it. Two teams of surgeons - one for each girl - and more than a dozen other medical staff spent months planning how they'd safely separate Sarabeth and Amelia, giving them a chance at independent lives. Few survive delivery, and even fewer live long enough to be discharged from the hospital and go home, like Sarabeth and Amelia did. "'They're so rare," said Treadwell, explaining that just 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 250,000 pregnancies involve conjoined twins. Mott Children's Hospital, becoming the first known set of conjoined twins to be successfully separated in Michigan. Marcie Treadwell, director of Michigan Medicine’s Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment Center.Ībout 14 months later, the twins returned to Ann Arbor, where they underwent an 11-hour surgery Aug. June 11, 2019.Ĭonjoined from their chests to their bellies, the identical twins' arms wrapped around one another as they were carefully lifted from their mother's womb at Michigan Medicine's Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, said Dr. Sarabeth and Amelia Irwin were locked in an embrace when they were born at 11:06 a.m. Watch Video: Doctors Separate Conjoined Twins at Michigan Medicine C.S.