How can conjoined twins have a baby while American sisters Abby and Brittany spark pregnancy rumors?

They are the most famous conjoined twins in the world.

Now they have attracted new attention after sparking pregnancy rumors by sharing an unusual video on social media.

Abby and Brittany Hensel – who rose to fame after starring in a reality TV series – shared a 30-second clip on TikTok with a series of ‘breaking news’ headlines. The last headline read: ‘Married with baby on the way’.

The video, which was shared without a caption, left many fans wondering if the twins were expecting, while others congratulated the couple.

‘Congratulations, mom, dad and aunt! How wonderful,” one person wrote.

‘Congratulations! What a blessing to be a mom. Wishing you a safe and healthy pregnancy and birth,” said another.

But it has also led many to speculate how the sisters might physically have a baby.

Like most conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany, 34, have never spoken publicly about their sex lives, despite immense public curiosity.

The Minnesota twins are one of only a handful of sets of dicephalic twins in history, meaning they have two heads and two hearts but share one body from the waist down — including their genitals and reproductive organs.

They currently both teach fourth and fifth grade at a local elementary school, where they share the same salary because they teach the same classes.

Although Brittany – the left twin – cannot feel anything on the right side of the body and Abigail – the right twin – cannot feel anything on her left side, their limbs move instinctively as if coordinated by one person.

This means that they can conceive a child in the conventional way.

However, it is not clear who the legal mother would be and whether there would be any complications with carrying a baby.

In 2021, Charity Lincoln Gutierrez-Vazquez welcomed a healthy baby girl at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle – the same hospital where she and her conjoined twins were born 21 years earlier.

She and her twin sister Kathleen were attached from the sternum to the pelvis when they were born in 2000.

The sisters, who each had one leg, shared several internal organs and a third fused leg.

However, when they were seven months old, they were successfully separated by a team of nearly thirty doctors, nurses and support staff in a dangerous 31-hour operation.

Only one case of successful pregnancy in conjoined twins not surgically separated has been recorded in the medical literature.

The 2001 report, from American doctors at the Atlanta Medical Center in Georgia documented the birth of the Blazek sisters.

Born in 1878, Josepha and Rosa Blazek were monogenital pygopagus twins, meaning they were joined at the base of the spine and pelvis but had separate vaginas.

The sisters claimed to have had sex only once – in July 1909 – which involved Rosa’s vagina, but Josepha claimed she ‘also had libido’.

Rosa’s last period prior to pregnancy occurred in July 1909.

Writing in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecologythe doctors said, “The twins recalled that Rosa experienced hyperemesis gravidarum early in her pregnancy, but Josepha was spared.

‘Josepha continued to menstruate from her side of their shared vagina throughout Rosa’s pregnancy and until about week 32.’

In April 1910, Rosa welcomed a ‘healthy’ son, delivered by vaginal birth. The baby was also breastfed.

But no first-hand account of the baby’s delivery has ever been published in the medical literature or additional details about the birth.

If Abby or Brittany were to have biological children, they would be the first female dicephalic – or side-by-side fused – twins to do so.

The females each have a heart and lungs, but all other organs, including their reproductive system, are shared.

The Siamese brothers Chang and Eng Bunker – born in 1811 – remarkably had 21 children together.

Abby and Brittany have always made it clear that they want to find romance and become mothers.

In interviews throughout their teenage years, Abby said, “Yes, we’re going to be mothers someday, but we don’t want to talk about how it’s going to work yet.”

Brittany added, “We’re going to be great moms.

‘The whole world doesn’t need to know who we see, what we do and when we are going to do it.’

Conjoined twins occur when the skin or internal organs of siblings are fused, affecting about one in 200,000 live births.

It is caused when a fertilized egg begins to divide into two embryos a few weeks after fertilization, but the process stops before it is complete.

The most common type is twins joined at the chest or abdomen.

Doctors can only tell which organs the siblings share and therefore plan surgery after they are born.

At least one twin survives 75 percent of the time.

Only one in 40,000 twins are born connected in some way, and only one percent of those survive the first year.