Miracle babies: Twins born 87 days apart could break world record for interval between births

The story of a set of twins born 87 days apart may now be
heading for the record books.
Today, Amy and Katie are adorable and healthy babies living
in Waterford, Ireland, with mother Maria Jones-Elliot, father
Chris Elliot and siblings Olivia and Jack, according to the Daily
Mirror.
But there was a period when Jones-Elliot said she wasn’t sure
of either of her twin daughters would make it.
“The doctors told me there was very little hope of them
surviving as they were so premature,” she told the Mirror,
explaining that her water broke a mere 23 weeks into her
pregnancy.
Dr. Eddie O’Donnell works at Waterford Regional Hospital,
where the twins were born, and helped on their delivery
team.
“Most people haven’t heard of this,” O’Donnell told the
Belfast Telegraph. “You can end up losing a twin, it could be
stillborn,” he said.
Despite the odds, Amy was born on June 1, 2012. Four months
premature, she weighed a little more than one pound .
“Amy was fighting for her life in an incubator and Katie was
struggling to survive in my womb,” Jones-Elliott told the
Mirror. “After hours, Chris and I said, ‘Enough is enough. Let
nature take its course.’ It was the hardest three months of our
lives.”
Doctors induced Jones-Elliot a second time on Aug. 27, during
her 36th week of pregnancy, the Mirror reports. After about
an hour, Katie emerged.
“For a baby delivered at 23 weeks to survive, is a huge
achievement from everyone’s point of view,” Dr. Sam Coulter
Smith, chief of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital and an expert in
obstetrics and gynecology, told the Irish Times. “For a 23-
week twin to survive is even bigger because twins often
behave more prematurely than singleton babies. That really is
right at the absolute border of viability.”
Smith added that the doctors who worked with the family
should be commended for their critical thinking in an
unfamiliar situation.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Guinness World Records
spokesman Damian Field wrote that he could “confirm that
Maria Jones-Elliott and her husband Chris Elliot have been in
contact with Guinness World Records. If their claim of 87
days between the birth of their twins is substantiated then
they will break the Guinness World Record title for Longest
interval between birth of twins. We currently await their
evidence.”
The current record holder is Peggy Lynn of Huntingdon, Penn.,
according to Field. Lynn gave birth to daughter Hanna and son
Eric 84 days apart between 1995 and 1996.
Y! Naija