Conjoined twins Susannah and Elizabeth Castle were born at 10:06 a.m. on April 22, 2021, at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to Stephanie and Dwight Castle. Dwight is pastor of missions at Redeemer Community Church in Avondale, Alabama. The twins join two brothers and a sister.
“The girls are here!” the couple posted on Facebook. “Stephanie was an absolute champ and did awesome and is also recovering well. We are so thankful for a smooth delivery without any complications. Thank you, Jesus.”
AL.com reported that the twin girls have separate heads, brains, and limbs. They also have separate hearts and share only the lining around the heart – the pericardium. The girls do share a liver and most likely a portion of their small intestines. This is a gift because the liver is the only human organ that regenerates. In time, the doctors will split the liver in half, leaving one half for each girl.
AP News reports that conjoined twins are extraordinarily rare. According to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has successfully separated 25 pairs of conjoined twins since 1957, conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births. About 70% of conjoined twins are female, and most are stillborn.
In preparation for the girls births, Dwight said, “I think in a lot of ways, God has sort of been preparing us for this for a while. We’ve grown certainly in awareness of how challenging it’s going to be and knowing we probably don’t know the half of it. But we have an increasing faith in the Lord that He is so clearly over this and providing for us.”
The Castles are still leaning on their faith and community. Dwight said, “We’re going to have a lot of help. He gives us new mercies each day and He’s faithful to do that. We just try to take it a day at a time and remember His faithfulness every step of the way and it really does fuel us to trust Him. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll live. It doesn’t guarantee the separation will happen or that it will go really well. There’s a lot of hopeful indications for all of those things, but our hope has to ultimately be in Him.”
Recently, the Castle Conjoined Twins Facebook page posted this:
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up for the family.