Twins Conjoined At The Heart Look Amazing 1 Year After Life-Threatening Separation Surgery

Eric and Elysse Mata have four beautiful children. The Lubbock, Texas, family hasn’t been without its hardships, though, and thank God and surgeons at Texas Children’s Hospital for their twin girls. 

The parents of Azariah, Knatalye, Adeline, and Mia have had a trying couple of years, but their Hope, Faith, and Love are keeping them strong. This family has become an inspiration, check out their amazing story and see what the kids are up to now!

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Meet the Mata twins, Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith.

On April 11th, 2014, Elysse Mata gave birth to the twin girls, who were connected by their “chest wall, lungs, pericardial sac (the lining of the heart), diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon and pelvis.”

Doctors had advised her to end her pregnancy, but the Matas never considered that an option.

They said, “I told him, ‘I don’t care what the case is, I’m going to go as long as I can, and if God decides that he needs them more, then so be it."”Thankfully that wasn’t the case — the girls were born 9 weeks early, but healthy. “It was heaven on earth, just to be able to hold them so close to me. Everybody talks about when they see their baby, they don’t count their toes, they just see a baby… I just saw two miracle angels laying there, peacefully sleeping.”

For the next year, Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith would live at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Eric, Elysse, and their 5-year-old son, Azariah, packed up their lives in Lubbock, and moved into an RV so they could be closer to the hospital and their babies.

The girls were strong — and they’d need to be.

Roughly 200,000 conjoined twins are born every year. If they can survive birth and the first day, conjoined twins still only have a 5-25% overall survival rate. They would be going for separation surgery, Dr. Darrell Cass, their lead surgeon, made sure his team was well-prepared for what was in store. For months the team operated on 3D models and mannequins. “Separating conjoined twins is a very complicated task and there are lots of risks involved, and death is absolutely one of those risks,” Dr. Cass said.