Ms Young, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, was 15 weeks and two days into her pregnancy when doctors broke the news and too far along to abort the child – not that the couple considered it an option.
She must give birth to the child whether it is terminated or not and said she would rather give their daughter - or "daughters", as they consider there to be two children - the best chance of survival.
"It'd be the same as being a child with autism or down syndrome … I don't believe in terminating the baby if it's healthy and growing fine, and everything is going to plan," Mr Howie said.
"Renee was the same."
But Mr Howie said doctors disagreed, urging the parents of seven to terminate their unborn child "because it would be looked upon as a freak".
"We've got a really big family, we don't really involve ourselves in the community except for schools where the children are. We have a good family base … it gives us a lot of support," Mr Howie said.
Maternal foetal specialist Greg Kesby has seen several conjoined twins in his career but none quite like this.
"It's probably the rarest of all the conjoined twins, you'd be thinking numbers of one in a million to one in two million for this kind of anomaly," he said.
Dr Kesby said there was a good chance the couple's child would not survive to a live birth but if she did, treatment could prove costly.
But the soon-to-be family of 10, which lives in a four-bedroom social housing block and rely on a disability and carer's pensions as income, said they would cross that bridge as it comes.
Nothing like the same, imo. 😞
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