On December 1, 2002, twin sisters Zainab and Jannat Rahman were born to parents Nipa and Luther in London, UK. Unfortunately, their birth was not without complications. In a rare turn of events, the two girls were born conjoined, attached at the chest and liver.

Doctors were aware of the risk of delivering the babies and urged the parents to consider an abortion. They refused, however, despite the odds of the girls' survival being "one in a million".

The decision was the right one to make: after a four-and-a-half hour operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital by a team of 20, the infants were successfully separated when they were six weeks old.

Now, they have just celebrated their 16th birthday - and it looks as if they both have very promising futures ahead of them.

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"Everything we went through before feels like a distant nightmare now," said Nipa, a 36-year-old nursery nurse. "At that time I never dared imagine this day. But to look at them now is amazing. They have achieved so much already and against the worst odds imaginable."

Luther added: "I am the luckiest father in the world. When I see these two I feel that God gave me a gift. We are still cherishing it. Every day. They have made us both very proud."

The parents know how fortunate they are to have had both their girls survive the operation. "They are a miracle," said Luther. "And I tell them that they are here for a greater need in this world. To achieve good things and to treat people with respect and kindness."

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Though they may not be joined together anymore, the twins are still inseparable. They describe themselves as best friends and claim that they have only ever spent one night apart.

They know they will have to go their separate ways soon, however, as they are planning on going to different universities to study different subjects. Zainab wants to go to Cambridge and become a paediatrician at Great Ormond Street - the very place her life started out. Jannat, on the other hand, is studying languages and wants to go to Oxford. She has dreams of becoming a lawyer and moving to France one day.

"Maybe it will be hard [to leave one another], but I guess we have to be independent at some point," said Zainab.

"People do ask us, ‘Will you be OK?’ I think we will," Jannat added. "As we’ve got older we’ve got more confident."

Their father still thinks they'll end up in the same place though.

"Even though they try so hard to be different from each other, they end up doing the same. I strongly believe that’s because they were conjoined," he said. "When they were younger they would sit across a room and smile at each other and laugh, before they could even talk. They’ve always had a deep connection."

Regardless of where they end up in life, the girls - and, indeed, their parents - are grateful to have survived, and are determined to do something with the second chance they've been given.

According to doctors, Kendra and Maliyah Herrin shouldn't have lived past 24 hours.

But the conjoined twins beat the odds and were successfully 'cut in half' at age four. They now live life as typical teenagers who have one leg each.

The sisters, who only shared one kidney, an abdomen, pelvis, liver and large intestine - are the focus of a BBC Three documentary, Living Differently, that reveals all about their risky 26-hour operation.

Find out what it's like to be Kendra and Maliyah here:

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They were born conjoined in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it took years of deliberating for their parents Jake and Erin to agree to the surgical separation.

At the time, surgeons had never separated twins with one kidney and their operation took months of careful planning and research.

The operation came with great risk; doctors told Jake and Erin that if it went well, it would give the girls independence and the chance of a longer life, but if it failed, it could kill them.

Thankfully, in the end, the twin's unprecedented separation surgery - which lasted longer than a day - went smoothly and they were out of hospital within six weeks.

However, they have had to go through life with one leg each, as well as endure spine-straightening and plenty of trips back to the hospital over their lives to deal with their rare medical condition.

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After the operation, Kendra was left with their one kidney, meaning Maliyah has had to have a number of kidney transplants.

The young woman was given her first kidney at age five, which came from her mother. This organ lasted ten years but when she was 15 started to fail; Maliyah was forced to go on dialysis before getting a new one from an anonymous donor a year and a half later.

Despite their pioneering medical history, if you ask the girls, they're just your average teenagers.

"When people first hear our story, they like to ask a lot of questions," Kendra said in the BBC Three documentary. "But simply we feel like we're the same as everybody else, we just have a few things that are a little different."

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Maliyah added: "Our parents talked to us about 'cut apart day,' but we were so young we didn't really understand what was happening."

Nowadays, the two girls - who also suffer from scoliosis and have rods in their back - attend school, do daily chores for their parents and hang out with their family. They also enjoy a huge following online, with their own blog, Youtube channel and Instagram account.

The pair claim they are grateful their parents decided to go through with the surgery, and appear to be thriving in their unusual circumstances.

"The best thing about only having one leg is we only have to paint on set of toenails," Kendra joked.

Three-year-old twins from Brazil who were joined at the head have been successfully separated, BBC News reports.

Bernardo and Arthur Lima, who were born with fused brains, underwent a series of surgeries in Rio de Janeiro - with the help of UK-based pediatric surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The toddlers had seven operations at the Instituto Estadual do Cerebro Paulo Niemeyer which totaled more than 27 hours of time spent under the knife in the final surgery alone and involved almost 100 medical staff members.

It made for one of the most complex surgeries carried out on conjoined patients, per Gemini Untwined, the charity - founded by Jeelani in 2018 - that funded the surgeries.

"The successful separation of Bernardo and Arthur is a remarkable achievement by the team in Rio and a fantastic example of why the work of Gemini Untwined is so valuable," Jeelani said in a statement obtained by The Independent.

"Not only have we provided a new future for the boys and their family, we have equipped the local team with the capabilities and confidence to undertake such complex work successfully again in the future.

"It is through this process of teamwork and knowledge-sharing globally that we can hope to improve the outcome for all children and families that find themselves in this difficult position."

"This is only possible through generous donations from members of the public," Jeelani concluded.

London-based doctors in London and Rio de Janeiro spent several months trialing methods which used virtual reality projections of the twins based on CT and MRI scans.

Jeelani said the surgical procedures saw doctors in different countries wearing headsets and operate in the same "virtual reality room" together.

The doctor said that previous unsuccessful attempts to separate the twins resulted in their anatomy being complicated by scar tissue. As a result, he had his concerns about the potentially life-threatening procedure.

Jeelani admitted to being exhausted after the 27-hour surgery, which saw him take no more than four 15-minute breaks for food and water. But he added that it was an incredible feeling to see the youngsters' family looking ecstatic that all had gone to plan.

He went on to say that, as is to be expected with conjoined twins after such a big procedure, the little ones' blood pressures and heart rates shot up - until they were reunited some days later and their hands touched.

The boys are still recovering in hospital and will be receiving six months of rehabilitation as they navigate their new lives as entirely separate individuals.

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Identical twins tend to do a lot of things in life together when they're growing up.

But Jill Justiniani and Erin Cheplak took things a step further and made sure they'd be doing everything together when they were adults too.

On May 5, the 30-year-old twin sisters beat the odds by giving birth to near-identical baby boys within hours of each other.

Both sons weighed in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces, measured 20 inches, and were born just meters apart at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Anaheim.

In an interview with KTLA, the sisters explained that - while they had always planned to get pregnant at the same time - they had never dreamed they would give birth so close together.

"The morning of our scheduled C section date my sister called me and said 'don't freak out but my water just broke,'" Jill recalled.

The unlikely coincidence meant that after Jill and her husband Ian welcomed their baby boy Oliver at 6:39PM, they only had to make a short trip across the hall to join Erin and her husband Zach in their room. At 11.31 PM, all four new parents welcomed baby Silas to the family.

Erin and Jill were then given rooms across the hall from each other with their babies. When they were discharged - naturally, at the same time - the two moms returned to their separate homes. But they were still within easy reach of each other, thanks to living just five minutes apart in Yorba Linda.

The twins went on to say that they were grateful their sons would have the same bond growing up that they had had.

"We're so incredibly close and we're so thankful that our sons have the same opportunity and the same experience coming their way," they said.

In an interview with People, Jill described how close she and Erin were as kids, saying: "We played together, slept together, ate together. My parents would talk about how we had our own language together. We'd be in our cribs side to side and make these cooing sounds. I'd make a sound and Erin would respond."

Despite the low odds that they would give birth on the same day, the twins concluded that - given their tight bond - it was meant to be.

"It just feels like it was supposed to be," Jill told the outlet. "It is a little surprising because what are the odds? But it's like, of course this would happen to us."

Congratulations to this wonderful family!

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A man has legally disowned twins that were conceived during a threesome with his wife and another man as he has claimed that he is infertile.

The man from New Zealand successfully disowned his twin daughters and asserted his newfound independence, describing himself as "sexually free."

The case was resolved earlier this year but only came to public attention this week when documents were released by the Family Court, as reported by the Daily Mail.

The legal battle unfolded as the man sought to have his name removed from his twin daughters' birth certificates, marking a significant turning point in a tumultuous post-divorce situation.

The former couple had separated around two years ago but officially divorced only three months prior to this recent court decision.

His ex-wife claimed that his actions were driven by a desire to avoid child support obligations, while the man insisted he was motivated by the need to "defend his honor."

The man has sought to remove his name from the twins' birth certificates. Credit: TwentySeven/Getty

The couple had previously adopted children together, but the man had undergone a vasectomy some 12 years before the twins, who are now teenagers, were born.

What makes this case unique is the circumstances surrounding the twins' conception. At the time, the ex-couple was engaging in regular threesomes with another man, who is believed to be the biological father of the twins. Their mother contended that the arrangement was made to help her become pregnant, a claim her ex-husband vehemently denied.

In her ruling, Judge Traicee McKenzie acknowledged the point of disagreement, saying: "Whether this was for pleasure or to conceive a child remains a point of disagreement, but the fact is that the parties were in this arrangement at the time of conception."

After the couple's separation, their relationships soured, leading to the legal battle that unfolded in the Family Court. Despite not believing he was the father, the twins took the ex-husband's surname, and his name was listed on their birth certificates. However, he sought to remove his name from the documents.

Their mother argued that her ex-husband was involved in the twins' lives, taking them on holidays and buying them presents, with the girls even calling him "Dad." Nevertheless, she acknowledged that he was not a "hands-on" father.

The man vehemently denied her claims, asserting that he had holidayed with the girls only once and cut contact with them immediately following the separation.

The man had a vasectomy prior to the children being conceived. Credit: Irina Zharkova / 500px/Getty

Judge McKenzie took into account the man's "rigid, consistent, and immoveable views" since the separation, emphasizing that he had made it clear from the outset that he wanted no relationship with the twins.

She noted: "There was no evidence in any detail of the nature of that relationship. No evidence of any expression of love or affection between them that would have been expected between a father and his daughter. They were children who lived in his house."

Ultimately, the man was granted a non-paternity order, effectively removing his name from the twins' birth certificates.

Featured image credit: Jessica Holden Photography/Getty