Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel would make history if one of them became pregnant
If you’ve kept up with TLC stars Abby and Brittany Hensel, you’ll know there could soon be a big step in their lives.
For those unfamiliar with the 1990 US-born twins, they first shot to fame after leading their very own TLC series, before going on to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where they opened up about the ins and outs of their life together.
The two were recently all over social media when the news emerged that Abby had tied the knot in 2021 to hubby, Josh Bowling.
And if you’ve been following the pair, you know that they’ve always wanted to become mothers, and they’d make history if one of them did manage to get pregnant.
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But how would it work?
Their condition
As dicephalus conjoined twins, the women have separate hearts and heads but share essentially everything else.
Abby controls the right arm and leg of the body, while Brittany controls the left, but it doesn’t mean they have to do everything together.
All of their organs below the rib cage, including their reproductive organs are shared, which makes it difficult to determine what would happen if they were to get pregnant.
Who would be the mother?
The sisters once said in a documentary: “Yeah, we are going to be mums one day, but we don’t want to talk about how it’s going to work yet.”
But how it’s going to work is on a lot of people’s minds.
As the pair share vital organs, it’s unclear about whether they would be able to get pregnant and who would legally be considered as the biological mother.
Has this ever happened before?
No female dicephalic twins have ever managed to conceive; however, males have.
Male conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, born in 1811, went on to have 21 children between them in Thailand.
Chang had 10 and Eng had 11, which broke the record and was entered into the Guinness World Records.
They had quite the romp around the US until they decided to settle down with sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates before dying just hours apart in 1874.
Rosa Blažek also went on to have a child in 1910, while she was conjoined with Josefa Blažek, but went on to be separated afterwards.
Is it possible for the two to conceive?
It’s not possible to know as the twins share everything at the pelvis but have their own spines and control their own half of their body.
But the two are notoriously private, so if they did get pregnant, they may not share the news.
Brittany once said: “The whole world doesn’t need to know who we are seeing, what we are doing and when we are going to do it.”
Their mum Patty explained in their show, Joined For Life: "That is probably something that could work because those organs do work for them."
"Yeah, we're going to be moms," Brittany agreed.
Britt Jones