The 15-month-old Irwin twins, Amelia and Sarabeth Irwin, at their Petersburg, Michigan home on Sept. 12. The twins were born conjoined at the chest in 2019. They shared a liver, but were each born with two arms, two legs, separate hearts and digestive tracts. This past July, during a 10-hour surgery at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, their liver was divided, their chest reconstructed and each had belly buttons made.
Written content from Kristen Jordan Shamus Detroit Free Press via Your Sun
Sarabeth and Amelia Irwin were locked in an embrace when they were born at 11:06 a.m. June 11, 2019.
Coinjoined 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. Marcie Treadwell, director of Michigan Medicine’s Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment Center.
About 14 months later, the twins returned to Ann Arbor, where they underwent an 11-hour surgery Aug. 5 at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, becoming the first known set of conjoined twins to be successfully separated in Michigan.
“‘They’re so rare,” said Treadwell, explaining that just 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 250,000 pregnancies involve conjoined twins. Few survive delivery, and even fewer live long enough to be discharged from the hospital and go home, like Sarabeth and Amelia did.
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.
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.
Amelia spotted a cell phone on the ground and began to crawl for it. She looked up at her big sister, Kennedy, who was running across the lawn, and said, “Sissy.”
“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.
Their mom, Alyson Irwin, smiled, and said, “They’re doing great.”
But 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.
A CONCERNING ULTRASOUND
Something about the pregnancy was different, but Alyson, 33, who works in agricultural industry, selling feed and fertilizer to farmers, couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
“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.
The Irwins looked forward to the 20-week prenatal appointment, set for Feb. 27, 2019. They were eager to see ultrasound images of their growing baby. They agreed they wouldn’t find out the gender, and instead wanted to let it be a surprise at delivery.
Still, Alyson was pretty convinced her hunch was right.
“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.
None of their previous prenatal doctor’s visits gave them any inkling that they were having twins or that they might be conjoined.
The ultrasound technician moved the wand around on Alyson’s belly, but then quickly excused herself to get the doctor.
“It may have been five minutes, but it seemed like forever,” before the doctor came into the room, Phil said. “That’s when we found out they were conjoined.”
“It kind of felt like the worst news you could receive, you know?” Alyson said. “Especially because the statistics are not good.
“They had never seen anything like that before. So they said their hearts were breaking for us, … but there wasn’t anything they could do.”
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.
“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. “Giving people false hope is not particularly helpful for anyone.”
Another ultrasound and a later MRI showed that the twins each had their own arms and legs. 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. Read more from Your Sun
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