There are always risks in having a baby and when your child is born you think it’s nothing short of a miracle. Nobody knows this better than the parents of Isabelle and Abby Carlsen.
These two gorgeous girls were born over a decade ago as twins – conjoined at the chest and abdomen, with a shared liver, small intestine and two hearts intertwined.
They were miracle babies and the eyes of the world were on them when they were born at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
But their parents had a tough decision to make as surgeons prepared to carry out the delicate operation of separating them.
The parents took the heavy burden of fear and worry over the operation on their shoulders. At the time of the twins’ separation, 60 percent of all such procedures ended in fatalities, according to the Star Tribune.
On May 12, 2006 a team of 17 surgeons performed the delicate operation which took 12 hours and had many scary moments, particularly when it came time to severing the liver they shared.
It was a long wait for their family but thankfully everything went to plan and both girls survived, although they had to spend the first six months of their lives in hospital rooms.
Now a decade on you won’t believe the two girls were once conjoined; they’re thriving!
Today, Isabelle and Abby hardly believe the picture of them conjoined as babies is really them.
“Every night we look in the mirror in our room, and we’re like, how do people get us mixed up?” Abby said, according to CBS News.
Today, they are fun girls, into gymnastics, friends with everyone and academically advanced, according to an interview with their teacher at the time Tiffany Moos.
Although both very independent, occasionally they will be walking along together and grab each other’s hand.
Listen to Abby and Isabelle’s story in their own words in the clip below.
These two beautiful girls are such a miracle, what an amazing team of surgeons to complete this operation successfully.
“Eric and I always love fun family traditions, especially in the fall!” Courtney tells PEOPLE. “Every year we enjoy taking the kids to the pumpkin patch and coming home and carving pumpkins together. Anything we can do to have fun with our kids, we are all about. Having six babies has definitely not slowed us down in that sense. Now we have nine kids to make memories with!”
Courtney says she has always loved picking out coordinating costumes for her older boys.
“Now that they are getting bigger, they have their own opinions of what they want to be,” she says. “When I told them my idea for the babies to be farm animals, I told them I would love for them to be the farmers. They didn’t love that idea so much, so we made a deal — if they would dress up as farmers just until I could get a picture, then they could change into what they wanted to wear to go trick-or-treating. All three big boys were good with that and I was able to get a picture of my little farm family.”
