Halifax baby finally takes first breath — 28 minutes after being born

Her name means miracle.

Baby Mireya was born at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax around 3 a.m. on Saturday, weighing 9 pounds 11 ounces. She wasn't breathing.

After 25 minutes of waiting for signs of life, 34-year-old Robyn Cyr was told that her fourth child was dead.

Nurses took the child out of the room.

Minutes later, a nurse returned to the room, too shocked to speak. Another nurse entered the room and spoke for her:

"Your baby's breathing."

A surgeon told Cyr's family he had no scientific explanation for the recovery.

"He said it's a miracle," Cyr tells Metro Halifax. "He said, 'I'm very sorry I gave up on your baby when I did, because I turned around and she's breathing on her own.'"

Cyr attributes Mireya's survival to answered prayer.

"All I can say is, hand of God," says Cyr. "That's what everyone's saying, she's here for a reason. God brought her back for a reason."

Also see: Kate Middleton criticized for taking baby-free vacation

Mireya is now breathing on her own in the neonatal intensive care unit and looks like any other healthy newborn baby. Cyr tells Metro Halifax that doctors are pleased with Mireya's progress.

Cyr held her daughter for the first time on Tuesday afternoon.

IWK Health Centre is conducting a review of this unusual case.

The National Post reports that the phenomenon of an infant spontaneously rebounding after a long period of not breathing is rare but not unprecedented.

In 2012, Analía Bouter, from Argentina, went to the morgue to say goodbye to her newborn daughter, born three months early. She found the child breathing in one of the morgue's drawers, 12 hours after she was declared dead.

Also see: All the seeds you should be eating

"We opened the drawer and I touched her hand. I felt her look at me and when I saw her alive I fell to my knees. Then suddenly she let out a cry. She was freezing in there," Bouter told the Telegraph.

Bouter and her husband named their daughter Luz Milagro, which translates as Light Miracle.

Because of developmental problems, little Luz went into cardiac arrest just weeks after her first birthday. She died the next day.

In 2010, a baby boy born in Australia was declared dead after 20 minutes of resuscitation efforts failed. The premature infant — little Jamie Ogg and his twin sister, Emily, were born at just 27 weeks — started breathing when he was placed across his mother's chest.

The doctor at first didn't believe the baby's parents, and claimed any movements were purely reflex. Finally they convinced him to examine their tiny son once more.

Also see: Natural back pain remedies that work

"He got a stethoscope, listened to Jamie's chest and just kept shaking his head. He said, 'I don't believe it, I don't believe it,'" said mother Kate.

Two years later, TODAY Moms reported that Jamie was a healthy, happy 2-year-old boy.

And last summer, a baby girl pronounced dead at birth came "back to life" in a Brazilian chapel three hours later. Just minutes before Yasmin Gomes was going to be taken to the morgue, she kicked one of her legs and opened her eyes.

"In 20 years of medicine, I have never witnessed anything like this," said the doctor who fought to save her life at birth.

Earlier this month, the Vatican confirmed a miracle that occurred in 2010:

James Fulton Engstrom, born in September of that year in Peoria, Illinois, did not breathe for 61 minutes after his birth. He didn't respond to CPR, doses of adrenaline and oxygen. His mother started praying to the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen — and James miraculously started breathing.

James is now three years old and is in good health, the Atlantic reports.

While Mireya's progress is encouraging, it's still too soon for doctors to know if the latest miracle baby will experience any real long-term damage from her scary entrance into the world.

The National Post reports that "it is entirely possible" that she will make a full recovery.