Bongi Sibuyi, 18, who gave birth to conjoined twins two weeks ago, hopes surgery to separate them will be successful.
|||Bongi Sibuyi, 18, who gave birth to conjoined twins two weeks ago, hopes surgery to separate them will be successful.
She is putting her faith in a team of experts who will come together at Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria to separate the twin boys she has named Recall and Ricardo.
They are joined at the pelvis and share a large bowel, one genital organ, urethra and hip bones.
The conjoined boys arrived at Steve Biko from a Mpumalanga hospital a day after they were born.
There they have been closely monitored and have undergone a battery of tests, scans and X-rays to determine if separation is feasible.
The boys have already had an emergency procedure to remove an obstruction in the bowel, but it may be months before they are ready for the complex surgery to separate them.
Sibuyi, who gave birth to the twins naturally, had known she was carrying twins but not that they were conjoined. on Monday she said she could not remember her first thoughts when she was told the babies were conjoined.
“The birth was a long process and the days following that were difficult,” she said.
Social workers were brought in when she arrived at the Pretoria hospital to counsel her and help her accept her babies. On Monday she said: “I love them very much, in the same way all mothers love their children.”
She says she can tell the babies – known in the hospital as Twin A and Twin B – apart from the position in which they lie… they are two individual babies.”
“Surgery to separate them is definitely possible, and between the time they are six months and a year old they will be ready for the procedure,” a doctor speaking on behalf of the team of experts said on Monday.
A process to stretch the skin would be done gradually over time and once doctors were satisfied that there was enough skin to cover the babies after surgery, the separation could go ahead.
The team for this major procedure would include paediatric surgeons, urologists, plastic surgeons and orthopaedic surgeons.
Currently a team of paediatric surgeons was monitoring their progress. Until the separation, the babies will stay in the hospital.
The boys share a large intestine, one genital organ and a pelvis and, doctors said, the separation would give them better quality of life.
“They share the bottom end of their digestive tract and have no opening at the end of their large intestine,” said the doctor.
She explained that the contents of their bowels emptied into the opening of the one underdeveloped (penis) they shared in a process called anorectal malfunction.
The opening on the (penis) had became congested with faecal matter and urine.
“We had to divert the bowel into the abdomen wall, where it will be drained out,” the doctor said.
Although they each have their own bladders, Twin B’s urine drains into Twin A’s, so a catheter was inserted to relive the pressure on one bladder.
On a scan, the underdeveloped penis they share showed as two fused together.
“They also have two scrotums outside their bodies but because of the lack of space the testes were unable to drop out of their bodies during their development but we could see them during surgery.”
She said during last week’s procedure each baby had his own team of anaesthetists. “They both reacted differently – one having high pulse rate and the other low.”
The twins can only lie in one position, with their heads at opposite ends to each other and when the Pretoria News arrived, Sibuyi was breastfeeding Ricardo.
“He sleeps a lot,” Sibuyi said, gazing at him fondly, and said his brother Recall was the more demanding of the boys.
“He cries and eats a lot,” she said of the baby whose recovery from surgery has been slower than the other.
The mother said she had accepted her babies as they were. At the same time she was looking forward to their separation.
“I can’t wait to take them back home to my parents and my family”, who she said had been very supportive.
“The doctors say they are doing very well and I am happy,” Sibuyi said.
The twins were a first for both her and their father’s families.
- Pretoria News