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When Hearts Conjoin: The True Story of Utah's Conjoined Twins
NEW: Complete text in eBook format.
Some people believe angels are real. Some believe they walk among us. On August 7, 2006, on the fourth floor of Primary Children’s Hospital, angels were there to comfort me on the scariest day of my life . . . I was grateful for the assurance that our decision to separate Kendra and Maliyah had been right. For months now, medical experts had debated whether it was ethical for us to subject Maliyah to the additional risks the surgery would bring. Would she be able to survive? I wanted to stay removed from the debate, but since the topic was about our children, and ultimately a choice Jake and I had to make, it was hard to close our hearts and minds completely to the experts’ concerns. We wanted what was best for Kendra and for Maliyah. We wanted them to have the chance to live a normal life, and the doctors agreed—that came only with separation—the reason we were gathered at Primary Children’s Hospital . . . “Separating twins is never standard,” Dr. Matlak warned us. “There’s always a chance something will go wrong.” We didn’t want to hear that, nor did we want to be alone. Our family had scheduled shifts to wait with us, always making sure that someone was home with the other three children. And, of course, we had the angels.
Before their birth, conjoined twins Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were given less than a 25% chance of living. Today these girls have beaten the odds twice. “By telling our story, we wanted to give people hope and a greater understanding that they can get through difficult times in their lives,” says Erin Herrin, the twins’ mother. “Miracles still exist every day.”
“When the ultrasound technician first told me I was carrying conjoined twins, something inside me froze. I’d heard the word conjoined before, but I didn’t register exactly what he meant. Not what it meant for me, or for my babies,” Erin adds. “I was advised to terminate the pregnancy, but there was no way I could. To me, these children were already mine, even though I knew we’d need a miracle.”
On February 26th, 2002, that miracle occurred. Kendra and Maliyah were born at 7:18 p.m. via C-section at the University of Utah Hospital then whisked off to Primary Children’s Hospital. “They were only six pounds four ounces together and too small to survive on their own,” Erin says. “I needed to keep enough faith that the miracles would continue to come.”
“Miracles bring new hope at the time when people are struggling,” Erin continues. “We were struggling emotionally as a couple. We’ve had to learn to find the miracles in life every day, not just hoping for the big things, although the big miracles came to us as well.”
It took awhile, but at last things settled down, but there was still the question of separation. The doctors felt there would be future complications dire enough to warrant the separation surgery, despite the fact none had previously been done for twins conjoined in the manner Kendra and Maliyah were. “This was the most difficult decision of my life,” Erin explains.
Winner of Utah’s Best of State Award for Literary Arts: Non-Fiction, When Hearts Conjoin is sure to touch the hearts of readers as they consider how fragile the balance between life and death can be and the miracles that touch all of our lives each day.
Written for Erin Herrin by Lu Ann Brobst Staheli, a three time Utah Best of State Medal recipient, former winner of Utah’s Original Writing Competition, and Utah’s Christa McAuliffe Fellow, When Hearts Conjoin is a story of faith, hope, and the power of a mother’s love, and features a foreword by #1 New York Times best-s
Some people believe angels are real. Some believe they walk among us. On August 7, 2006, on the fourth floor of Primary Children’s Hospital, angels were there to comfort me on the scariest day of my life . . . I was grateful for the assurance that our decision to separate Kendra and Maliyah had been right. For months now, medical experts had debated whether it was ethical for us to subject Maliyah to the additional risks the surgery would bring. Would she be able to survive? I wanted to stay removed from the debate, but since the topic was about our children, and ultimately a choice Jake and I had to make, it was hard to close our hearts and minds completely to the experts’ concerns. We wanted what was best for Kendra and for Maliyah. We wanted them to have the chance to live a normal life, and the doctors agreed—that came only with separation—the reason we were gathered at Primary Children’s Hospital . . . “Separating twins is never standard,” Dr. Matlak warned us. “There’s always a chance something will go wrong.” We didn’t want to hear that, nor did we want to be alone. Our family had scheduled shifts to wait with us, always making sure that someone was home with the other three children. And, of course, we had the angels.
Before their birth, conjoined twins Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were given less than a 25% chance of living. Today these girls have beaten the odds twice. “By telling our story, we wanted to give people hope and a greater understanding that they can get through difficult times in their lives,” says Erin Herrin, the twins’ mother. “Miracles still exist every day.”
“When the ultrasound technician first told me I was carrying conjoined twins, something inside me froze. I’d heard the word conjoined before, but I didn’t register exactly what he meant. Not what it meant for me, or for my babies,” Erin adds. “I was advised to terminate the pregnancy, but there was no way I could. To me, these children were already mine, even though I knew we’d need a miracle.”
On February 26th, 2002, that miracle occurred. Kendra and Maliyah were born at 7:18 p.m. via C-section at the University of Utah Hospital then whisked off to Primary Children’s Hospital. “They were only six pounds four ounces together and too small to survive on their own,” Erin says. “I needed to keep enough faith that the miracles would continue to come.”
“Miracles bring new hope at the time when people are struggling,” Erin continues. “We were struggling emotionally as a couple. We’ve had to learn to find the miracles in life every day, not just hoping for the big things, although the big miracles came to us as well.”
It took awhile, but at last things settled down, but there was still the question of separation. The doctors felt there would be future complications dire enough to warrant the separation surgery, despite the fact none had previously been done for twins conjoined in the manner Kendra and Maliyah were. “This was the most difficult decision of my life,” Erin explains.
Winner of Utah’s Best of State Award for Literary Arts: Non-Fiction, When Hearts Conjoin is sure to touch the hearts of readers as they consider how fragile the balance between life and death can be and the miracles that touch all of our lives each day.
Written for Erin Herrin by Lu Ann Brobst Staheli, a three time Utah Best of State Medal recipient, former winner of Utah’s Original Writing Competition, and Utah’s Christa McAuliffe Fellow, When Hearts Conjoin is a story of faith, hope, and the power of a mother’s love, and features a foreword by #1 New York Times best-s
137 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 23, 2012
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About the author
LuAnn Brobst Staheli
13 books62 followersLu Ann Brobst Staheli got her start as a celebrity paparazzi-stalker-chick, which led to her award-winning career as a ghostwriter for celebrity memoirs. A masochist at heart, she taught junior high school English for 33 years, and once spent two weeks of summer vacation backpacking through Europe with 15 of her students. She has won three Utah Best of State Medals—two for writing and one for teaching—but refuses to wear them all at the same time because she’d hate to be known as a show-off. She is the true bibliophile, with something in excess of 1,000 books in her personal home library. After having donated the nearly 1,000 books in her classroom library to the other English teachers in her department, Lu Ann moves this year to a new position as the school librarian, where she can be surrounded by books and share her passion for reading with the entire group of students and faculty. Her published works include A Note Worth Taking, a MG/YA novel; When Hearts Conjoin, the story of the conjoined Herrin twins; Psychic Madman about mentalist Jim Karol; One Day at a Time: Teaching Secondary Language Arts; Books, Books, and More Books: A Parent and Teacher's Guide to Adolescent Literature, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Lu Ann is a Senior Editor with Precision Editing Group, where she works with clients on both fiction and non-fiction manuscripts.
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