For the first time, the birth mother of the separated twins tells of her heartbreaking journey leading to their adoption, and praises the Aussie ‘angels’ who saved her girls. Jonica Bray reports.
Her eyes filled with tears of joy, Lovely Golder watched on TV in Bangladesh as surgeons in Australia miraculously separated conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna – the little girls she had given birth to. Then came the pain.
Lovely knew the price of the life-saving operation was a mother’s ultimate sacrifice: She would never see her girls again.
Even knowing she gave life to her daughters twice – once in hospital and again by putting them up for adoption so they could get medical help – could not stop the heartbreak.
Married at the tender age of 18 and falling pregnant at 20, Lovely, along with husband Kartick Mollick, was overjoyed at the news she was going to be a mother.
“We were both very happy that we were going to have children, and hoped to have a happy family raising them nicely,” says Lovely, now 23.
It was only months later, at an ultrasound appointment, the couple were told they were expecting twins, and that concerns had been raised regarding their health.
“Doctors informed me we were going to have daughters, but the report also said they had some tumours on top of their heads,” remembers Lovely.
Devastated, the pair returned home to their small village in Rangpur, Bangladesh. Trying not to think the worst, they clung to a desperate hope their children would be OK.
On December 22, 2006, Lovely went into labour. “I was taken to a local maternity clinic by a three-wheeler cycle van. A doctor from our village informed them that an emergency patient was being taken to the clinic.”
With her husband, mother and sister anxiously awaiting news, doctors prepared Lovely for a caesarean section.
“I was very worried and afraid when I saw all of the instruments in the operating theatre and cried, holding my mother and my husband.
Then the doctors injected me with some medicine and I lost my consciousness.” When Lovely awoke two-and-a-half hours later, she was blindfolded – not a normal practice in Bangladeshi hospitals. Dazed and disoriented, she began to panic, until she heard the cries of her new daughters.
“I thought that the ultrasound report must be wrong and that my babies were healthy and crying normally,” she says.
“I wanted to untie my eyes, but I found my hands were tied. These were not tied before I was given the medicine.”
Asking for her blindfold to be removed, Lovely was anxious to catch the first glimpse of her precious girls – but medical staff refused.
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