Knit together

Nick and Chelsea Torres couldn’t believe their ears when they heard a heartbeat. An ultrasound three weeks earlier hadn’t been able to find one. At their eight-week appointment, they thought the doctor would say they’d miscarried their unborn child.

Chelsea was so overjoyed she didn’t notice a second heartbeat. The doctor revealed the image on the ultrasound was conjoined twins, a rare condition occurring once in every 200,000 live births.

Specialists in Boise, Idaho, told the couple, both 24, to abort the babies. Although the Torreses don’t claim religious faith, they’d always been against abortion. But under the pressure from their family, friends, and the doctors, they almost changed their minds.

“For about four hours we agreed that we could do it,” Nick said. But he says Chelsea realized, “It wasn’t … a tiny baby or a tiny blob being extracted. It was me giving someone permission to kill my child.”

At 22 weeks into the pregnancy, specialists at Texas Children’s Hospital advised the couple to abort. They said no.

On Jan. 30, 2017, Chelsea delivered Callie and Carter. The Torreses were prepared for doctors to separate the girls soon after birth, but doctors said at that point the twins were healthier together than apart. Nick and Chelsea brought them home to Blackfoot, Idaho.

Callie and Carter are connected from the belly button down. They share internal organs, including their intestines, kidneys, and reproductive organs, and one pair of legs.

But at 10 months old, Callie and Carter are developing like normal babies in other ways. They roll over, scoot, say “dada,” and will eventually crawl and then walk. While they share bodies, they don’t share personalities. Callie is giggly and easygoing. Carter is cautious and cries around strangers.

Their mother has experienced seesawing emotions. Chelsea was bitterly disappointed that the girls couldn’t be separated—and that turned into postpartum depression and anger.

She found support in a Facebook group of 150 moms pregnant with or raising conjoined twins around the world. While some try everything to give their conjoined twins life, others write they’ve ended their pregnancies. “You have people who literally have tried everything … and then you have people who opt out and say well this is the easy way to go,” Chelsea said.

The Torreses know that choosing life was not the “easy way to go.”

Nick and Chelsea couldn’t find a day care provider that felt comfortable taking care of conjoined twins, so Nick stays home while Chelsea works the overnight shift at Walmart. That’s not what she hoped to be doing. At the time she got pregnant, she was in school to become a vet technician.

Because of the girls’ unique body shape, Chelsea has to sew every shirt or dress they wear. They had to find a tech company to make a special car seat with two sets of head straps.

Callie and Carter’s future is uncertain. They’ve decided the twins will decide when and if they want to separate. Separation would give their daughters independence but a host of medical problems like colostomy bags and only one leg.

Chelsea admits she sometimes feels haunted by the choice she didn’t make—the choice doctors claimed would be best for her daughters.

“I have looked at them and said maybe I should have aborted them,” Chelsea said. “But then I also look at them and notice that they’re not unhappy with how they are. So I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Nick and Chelsea know their daughters won’t have an easy life, but they do have a chance at life: together or apart.