I was in a railway station with my baby when I suddenly thought, "Why didn't anyone ever notice that this baby has two heads?" Two lovely heads, with golden-red hair and blue blue eyes, but still: two heads. I wondered, "Why didn't they pick that up on the ultrasound? Did I forget to take her for a well-baby exam? It's lucky that the birth went as smoothly as it did with such a complex presentation. Maybe that's why the pushing was harder this time."
I kept thinking. "We should have named each head separately -- two brains, two souls, right? It's going to be really frustrating for them when they start walking and each head wants to go in a different direction."
When I looked more closely I saw that in my arms I had two babies, joined at the hip but otherwise separate. I gently jiggled the spot where they were conjoined and it separated with a slight metallic click and only a bit of resistance, like those magnetic building blocks.
I cradled one baby, smaller and limper, so that I could not see her face. The bigger baby Stella took my finger and toddled off with me down the steps toward the trains. I was a mother of twins and I never even knew it! I was going to have to tell Elwood that I separated our conjoined twins all by myself.
Then the alarm went off.
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