Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel pictured with newborn baby for first time

Daily Mirror

20 hours ago

Reality TV stars Abby and Brittany Hensel have been spotted with a newborn baby, leading to speculation that they've grown their family
Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel have been spotted with a newborn baby, leading to speculation that they've decided to grow their family.
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The 35-year-old twin sisters were seen carrying the infant in a car seat before carefully making sure the baby was secured in the back of the vehicle. The siblings then spent some time chilling out at the back of the Tesla boot before leaving the car park in Arden Hills, Minnesota.
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It comes after rumours began circulating last year that they were pregnant with their first baby. The pair are yet to confirm whether the baby is their own and the teacher sisters now prefer to stay out of the spotlight.
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Abby and Brittany shot to fame back in 1996 when they appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show at the tender age of six-years-old. This initial exposure led to huge public interest, before they bagged their own TLC reality show, Abby & Brittany.
The series documented their lives as they graduated from college and entered the complex world of adulthood as conjoined twins.
Abby tied the knot with Joshua Bowling in 2021 and is already a stepmum to his daughter Isabella from a previous relationship, but has also previously expressed her desire to expand their family.
"We're going to be moms," Brittany said in Joined for Life: Abby & Brittany Turn 16 in 2006. "We haven't thought about how being moms is going to work yet."
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Abby and Brittany are dicephalic parapagus twins, which means they share one torso to which their two heads are joined, and they also share one pair of legs.
Abby, who is on the right side of the body, controls the right arm and leg, and Brittany has control over the left limbs. Conjoined twins are very rare, but the Hensen sisters are even more unusual because they are really pretty symmetrical compared to other conjoined twins.
They have always been really candid about their unique shared lives, and recently posted a video on their TikTok page, which saw a doctor explain how their joined anatomy actually works.
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"Abby and Brittany Hensel's anatomy is a remarkable blend of shared and individual organs and tissues," the video they shared by molecular biologist Hashem Al-Ghaili explained, "The twins each have their own distinct upper body systems. Abby and Brittany have two heads, two brains, two spinal cords, and two hearts, which are part of a shared circulatory system."
Despite having the same blood circulation system, their brains and spinal cords are their own, which means they have to work in tight-knit coordination to carry things, get places, or drive a car.
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The pair previously opened up on their reality TV show for TLC just how painstaking the coordination has to be on a minute-by-minute basis.
"We have two licenses," Abby said back in 2012, "When we got our driver's licenses, we each had to take the test. We both passed."
Brittany explained that they both have to steer, but her sister was the one in charge of the brake and acceleration pedals.
Despite having their own hearts, brains, spines, and four lungs, the sisters share one set of reproductive organs.
When they were children, their parents were offered the possibility of separation surgery, but they turned it down, because it was unlikely that both their daughters would have survived.