'Giving them up was the best thing'

Dhaka - The impoverished Bangladeshi mother of conjoined twins separated last week in a complex operation in Australia says she is overjoyed at the news the twins are doing well, but doesn't want them back.



Lovely Mallick, 22, said she gave up Trishna and Krishna soon after their birth almost three years ago because there was no way she and her husband could care for the sickly newborns.

"I'm overjoyed with the news that my babies are in good condition," she said by telephone from Khulna, about 135 kilometres south-west of the Bangladesh capital Dhaka.

"No mother in the world could be as proud as me. I always knew that they would get separated. I just knew everything would be okay in the end for my girls."

The twins, who turn three on December 22, were separated by a team of specialists who worked for 32 hours on Monday and Tuesday to divide their connected skulls, brains and blood vessels.

The procedure took two years of planning and preparatory operations. Both girls are now awake and in a stable but serious condition, and the surgery has been hailed a success.

Lovely and her husband Kartik Chandra Mallick, 30, who works in a jute mill, are both Hindus and Krishna was named after the Hindu god. Trishna got her name because it rhymed with her sister's.

The couple do not have any other children.

"I promised myself we would not start a family until after we had news our first-born girls were healthy. I read the news in a newspaper last week and I went straight to the temple and prayed," she said, through tears.

Lovely said her husband earned only &46 a month and she knew the twins were better off staying in Australia.

"But I do want to see them. I want to take care of them. I want to go to Australia," she said.

Lovely said she did not know she was having twins until after the birth at a local clinic by Caesarean section. When she learned they were conjoined she was "disappointed."

"We stayed for a month at the clinic and just had no idea what to do. We were told that separating was impossible," she said.

"It was my in-laws who decided that we needed to give these girls up to the Nirmola Missionary Child Centre in Khulna."

The girls were then transferred to the Mother Teresa home in Dhaka where Australian volunteer Danielle Noble began the mission to get them to Australia.

"I didn't want to abandon my children, no matter how unusual they were, but considering our financial condition I knew that giving them up was the best thing for the girls."

The girls collectively 7,7kg at birth, she said.

Lovely said she was in awe at what the girls' guardian in Australia, Moira Kelly, has done.

"My babies are now in good condition. I pray that they will be fully cured soon and lead normal lives. They will be educated and smart," she said.

"She (Kelly) has done the greatest thing for my babies. I'm just their biological mother, but I could not do anything for them. She did everything a mother does for her babies. She has done something more than a mother."