A baby girl pronounced dead at birth ‘came back to life’ three hours later on the altar of a hospital chapel, it was reported today.
The body of Yasmin Gomes had been placed in a box and left in the chapel at the hospital in Londrina, south Brazil, by a nurse who ‘couldn’t face sending her to the morgue’, according to reports.
But when the newborn’s grieving grandmother arrived with a mortician to pick up her body for burial they were stunned when the baby suddenly kicked one of her legs, then opened her eyes.
Shocking: A baby girl pronounced dead at birth ‘came back to life’ three hours later on the altar of a hospital chapel, pictured
The baby’s grandmother Elza Silva told Brazil’s Globo G1 website: ‘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.’
Hospital records show Yasmin was born alive after a normal birth on Tuesday morning at the Lincoln Graca hospital, but stopped breathing immediately after birth.
Doctors unsuccessfully tried to revive the baby several times but she was finally declared dead at 11am, and a death certificate issued.
Yasmin’s mother Jenifer da Silva Gomes, 22, told Brazils Tanosite website she was the first to be told that he daughter had died.
She recalled: ‘My world crashed down right then. It was the most desperate moment when all my dreams were snatched away.’
Nurse Ana Claudia Oliveira, who accompanied the birth, said she asked for the baby’s body to be laid in the hospital chapel, instead of the normal procedure of being sent to the refrigerated morgue.
She said: ‘She’s a little angel, a child. I just couldn’t face the thought of her being sent down to the morgue.’
She added that she washed and dressed the dead baby and had no doubt that she was dead.
She said: ‘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.
Yasmin’s father Cleverson Carlos Gomes, 26, said he received the news where he was waiting in the hospital’s corridor and went straight to the chapel.
He said: ‘I saw my daughter’s pale, lifeless body. I couldn’t stay there. I ran out of the chapel in tears.’
Yasmin’s body remained in a box in the chapel until 2pm, when her grandmother arrived with the owner of a funeral parlour, family friend Rosilis Ferro, carrying the baby’s coffin.
But as soon as they went to pick her up, the newborn kicked a leg, according to Ms Ferro.
She said: ‘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.’
Mum Jennifer said she was still being comforted by family members when a nurse burst into the room and shouted: ‘Your daughter’s alive’.
She remembered: ‘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.
Doctor Aurelio Filipak, who battled to save Yasmin and signed her death certificate, said: ‘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.’
He said a team of medics tried to resussitate the baby for nearly an hour. ‘All the equipment, like the cardiac monitor and oximeter, all showed that she was not breathing and had no heart beat,’ he added.
Today Yasmin’s family said they plan to change her name to include Victoria – ‘victory’ in Portuguese – and said they believed her ‘ressurection’ was a miracle.
Jennifer said: ‘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.’
