Mother-of-Seven Gives Birth to Baby with 1 Head, 2 Faces & 2 Brains (Photos)

An Australian woman has miraculously given birth to conjoined twins with one body and two heads despite doctors initially telling them to terminate the pregnancy.

Renee Young and her partner Simon Howie, of Tregear in Sydney's west, welcomed their daughters on Thursday six weeks before they were due. The couple, who found out via an ultrasound that the twins they were expecting was in fact one child with two symmetrical faces and two brains connected by the one brain stem, said doctors were shocked by the girls' exceptional progress.

The girls were born with a rare condition called diprosopus, which means they share the same body
and vital organs but have their own faces and brains which are connected by only one brain stem. The condition is so rare that only 35 cases have ever been recorded and none have survived.

But despite all the forewarned medial problems likely to come their way, Ms Young and Mr Howie are just happy their girls are alive and well. The couple, who are parents to seven other children defied the doctors, who told them the baby would be looked upon by the public as a freak, because Ms Young had never terminated a pregnancy and because they had a family 'that gives us a lot of support'.

Ms Young gave birth to the girls, named Faith and Hope, via an emergency caesarean at Blacktown Hospital last Thursday.