Salt Lake City ? Swathed in gauze, twin sisters Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were rolled from the operating room and moved to separate beds for the first time in their lives Tuesday after 26 hours of surgery in which doctors separated the 4-year-olds and reconstructed their internal organs.

“When I was done with the operation and we were getting ready to take (Kendra) to the ICU, I got tears in my eyes, because they looked so good,” pediatric surgeon Dr. Michael Matlak said.

The girls had been born in a perpetual hug, their little bodies fused at the midsection so that they were practically face-to-face. They shared a liver, a kidney, a pelvis, one set of legs and part of their intestines.

Surgeons at Primary Children’s Medical Center gave each girl one leg, split their liver and intestines and reconstructed their bladders and their pelvic rings.

Kendra kept their one functioning kidney, while Maliyah will be put on dialysis and receive one of her mother’s kidneys in a transplant operation in three to six months.

Parents Jake and Erin Herrin, who also have a 6-year-old daughter and twin 14-month-old boys, had an emotional reunion with their daughters.

“There were happy tears and sad tears,” hospital spokeswoman Bonnie Midget said.

The operation was believed to be the first time surgeons separated conjoined twins with a shared kidney, said Dr. Rebecka Meyers, chief pediatric surgeon at Primary Children’s Medical Center.