Doctors will decide tomorrow whether to operate this week to separate newly born conjoined twins Faith and Hope Williams.
Doctors will decide tomorrow whether to operate this week to separate newly born conjoined twins Faith and Hope Williams.
The babies, who were delivered by Caesarean section on Wednesday, are being cared for in Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
Their mother, Laura, made medical history by becoming the world's youngest mother of conjoined twins at just 18.
She said the moment she first saw the children at University Hospital, London, was "brilliant" and "amazing".
She told a newspaper: "After I came round from the operation they wheeled me in to see them. They had tucked Hope's arm underneath and it was Faith's arm that I could see.
"I touched her and I took her hand and she was grasping it. They were both blowing little bubbles.
"They were so beautiful, I couldn't stop looking at them. After everything everyone said, I'm so glad they've proved them all wrong."
Doctors warned Mrs Williams and her husband, Aled, that the twins might not survive after a 12-week scan revealed they were joined from their breast bone to the top of their navels.
But the couple, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, refused to have a termination.
Mrs Williams said: "The night before the operation I couldn't sleep. I prepared myself for the worst, just in case, but from the first time I felt them kick, I thought they were going to be OK.
"And they're still here. They're little fighters.
"They have all their own limbs and their own hearts. The only thing they share is the liver and, as that's the only major organ that can regenerate, the doctors can split it between the two of them and it will grow back."
Her husband said: "No words can describe it. I was so excited and happy and when I heard them screaming, it was like the world had lifted off my shoulders.
"The first thing I did was tell Laura they were all right and when I did, a single tear fell down her cheek."
The twins were christened one hour later then put in an ambulance to Great Ormond Street in London - one of the leading European centres for the care of conjoined twins.
Nuffield professor of paediatric surgery at the hospital, Agostino Pierro, said the children's hearts had significant abnormalities that could require surgery.
He added: "The current concern is that the two hearts and the joined circulation raise a risk that the children might suddenly deteriorate and need emergency separation surgery.
"Although the team would prefer to leave surgery until the children are older and stronger, increasingly we believe that this may be risky.
"A meeting will be held to decide whether to attempt a planned separation this week, but it will be the parents who finally decide."
Conjoined twins occur when the single egg from which identical twins develop fails to divide properly after conception. It usually happens in women 25 to 40 years old. The survival rate is somewhere between 5% and 25%.
