Rare Identical Triplets — 2 Conjoined — Were Born in a 1 in 50 Million Chance

Identical triplets were born this weekend in Texas, and that isn't even the most extraordinary part. Two of the triplet girls are conjoined at the pelvis, a combined scenario that has a 1 in 50 million chance.

The babies — Catalina, Ximena, and Scarlett — were born on Saturday when their mother, Silvia Hernandez, went into labor and delivered via cesarean section at nearly 34 weeks. According to Corpus Christi Medical Center, they all weighed 4 pounds, 11 ounces, and were breathing without the assistance of a respirator.

The rare set of triplets wasn't discovered at an initial scan, which found two heart beats and led Hernandez and husband Roel Torrez to believe they were having twins. When she got sick, medics realized there was a third baby and that two were connected.

"The truth is I cried, not because of how the babies would look, because we knew we would do our best to give them the best and most productive life possible," she wrote on her Facebook page. "I cried because the doctor said we had to understand and accept the fact that once they were born they could die."

After weeks of hospital bed rest and the delivery, however, doctors performed an emergency surgery on Ximena and Scarlett, the conjoined girls, who are separate from their belly button up. They also have separate legs and separate bladders, but part of their intestines and abdominal wall is attached.

It will likely be six months or even a year before doctors can attempt to separate them, but Torrez is patient.

"We don't care if they're conjoined, if they get separated or not," Torrez told NBC. "That's something God sent us to take of and we are going to the best we can . . . God chose us to take care of these babies."