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Sometimes tiny babies are the toughest fighters. A baby in Brazil prove that this week by coming back to life 3 hours after hospital staff pronounced her dead.
At a hospital in Londrina, south Brazil, baby Yasmin Gomes was declared dead as soon as she was born. A nurse on duty could not, however, bear sending the newborn to the morgue, but instead placed her in a box at the altar of the hospital chapel.
Three hours later, when the baby’s grandmother arrived with a mortician to pick up her body for burial, they were shocked when the infant kicked her legs when she was lifted and then opened her eyes!
Grandmother Elza Silva says,
‘At first I couldn’t believe it, we couldn’t accept that it could happen. Then we saw that she was breathing. We hugged each other and started to shout, ‘she’s alive, she’s alive’. It was a miracle.’
Yasmin’s birth was normal on Tuesday morning hospital records show. But the baby stopped breathing moments later. Doctors tried to revive her several times but could not bring the baby back to life. She was declared dead and a death certificate was issued at 11 am.
Yasmin’s mother Jenifer da Silva Gomes, 22 was told by the doctors that her daughter had died.
‘My world crashed down right then. It was the most desperate moment when all my dreams were snatched away,’ she says.
Nurse Ana Claudia Oliveira, who accompanied the birth did not want the newborn’s body to be sent to the cold morgue. She therefore requested if she could be placed in a box in the hospital chapel instead.
‘She’s a little angel, a child. I just couldn’t face the thought of her being sent down to the morgue,’ she said.
The nurse also adds that she washed and dressed the newborn baby girl and had no doubt that she was dead.
‘I can assure you, the child was dead. Her pupils didn’t respond to light. All her signs pointed to the complete absence of life. I saw it with my own eyes. She was blue all over, completely dead,’ she said.
26-year-old Cleverson Carlos Gomes, had been waiting in the hospital corridor for news of his baby’s birth. But the father was instead informed that his daughter had not made it. He immediately rushed to the hospital chapel.
‘I saw my daughter’s pale, lifeless body. I couldn’t stay there. I ran out of the chapel in tears.’
It was at 2.00 pm, three hours after Yasmin was declared dead that her grandmother entered the chapel again with the owner of a funeral parlor, family friend Rosilis Ferro, carrying the baby’s coffin.
But they received the shock of their life when the baby kicked her leg!
‘It was an incredibly emotional moment. I began to shake and I couldn’t speak, I was overwhelmed with happiness. I called a nurse who at first didn’t believe it, she told us they were just spasms. But then the baby opened her eyes,’ recalls the elated grandmother.
Jennifer says that she was still being comforted by relatives when a nurse burst into the room announcing that her daughter was alive.
She says, “At first I had no reaction, I didn’t know what to think. Then I started to be sick. But after that, I couldn’t contain my happiness.”
The baby was rushed to an intensive care unit at the nearby Sagrada Familia children’s hospital, where her condition is described as stable.
Meanwhile, Dr. Aurelio Filipak who tried in vain to save the baby’s life and signed her death certificate says,
‘People can make their own conclusions, but only those who were there know what really happened. In 20 years of medicine, I have never witnessed anything like this.’
‘All the equipment, like the cardiac monitor and oximeter, all showed that she was not breathing and had no heart beat,’ he added.
Yasmin’s mother says,
‘There is no explaining miracles. They happen as God wants. If it was his will that our daughter had died, we would have accepted it, but he brought her back, so there must be a higher purpose in all this.’
The family now plans to change her name and add the name Victoria – ‘victory’ in Portuguese. They say her coming back to life was a true miracle.
