Good News: A Christmas Miracle: “The Hand of God”

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Tracy Hermanstorfer was in labor with her third child at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs with her husband Mike at her bedside. They had no idea how unusually special this Christmas baby would be.

As she got closer to delivery with Mike holding her hand, Tracy suddenly felt very sleepy, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581444,00.html closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillow. Suddenly, chaos erupted as Tracy stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest. Mike recalled that doctors told him, "We're going to take your son out now. We have been unable to revive her and we're going to take your son out."

“She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn’t breathing” according to Dr. Stephanie Martin, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Memorial Hospital. “The baby was, it was basically limp, with very slow heart rate.”

The baby boy was placed in Mike’s arms. "They handed him to me, he's absolutely lifeless," the new father said. The doctors went to work on the baby as Mike held him, and soon he began to breathe. "His life began in my hands," the awe-struck dad said. "That's a feeling like none other. Life actually began in the palm of my hands."

Dr. Martin estimates Tracy had no heart beat for about four minutes. As the lifeless mother was being rushed to surgery by part of the team of technicians, her pulse returned. "My legs went out from underneath me," Mike would later say. "I had everything in the world taken from me, and in an hour and a half I had everything given to me."

Tracy succinctly said, "I got a second chance in life.”

Following the miraculous delivery and birth, both mother and son, named Coltyn, are doing very well and at home. As for why this occurred, Dr. Martin has no explanation. "We did a thorough evaluation and can't find anything that explains why this happened," she said.

Mike thinks he knows. It was “the hand of God."

"We are both believers ... but this right here, even a nonbeliever — you explain to me how this happened. There is no other explanation," the new father said.

Likely, no one will ever have to remind the Hermanstorfers of the real meaning of Christmas, or the power of God. As for Dr. Martin, otherwise routine childbirth may never be the same again, either. Asked about Divine intervention Martin offered, “Wherever I can get the help, I’ll take it.”

Yes, miracles do happen, and that is very Good News.