Baby, mom called Christmas miracle

COLORADO SPRINGS, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- A Colorado woman and her baby were brought back to life after apparently dying in labor, observers say.

Tracy Hermanstorfer's heart stopped Christmas Eve while she was in labor and so doctors at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs performed an emergency Cesarean section without anesthesia in an effort to save the baby, KRDO, Colorado Springs, reported Tuesday.

"(The mother) was dead, she had no heartbeat, no breathing," Dr. Stephanie Martin, director of maternal fetal medicine at Memorial Hospital, told KKTV, Colorado Springs. "She was as gray as her sweatsuit, no signs of life."

Immediately after the baby was delivered, the mother's pulse came back, Martin said. The baby, however, wasn't breathing. The tiny lifeless body was handed to his father, who held his son while doctors worked to get him breathing. "They actually got him started right in my hands," Mike Hermanstorfer he told KKTV. "That is an amazing feeling."

Doctors say mother and child, named Coltyn, are showing no signs of complications. They still don't know what sent Tracy Hermanstorfer into cardiac arrest.

"There's only one explanation for having either one of them, let alone both of them here," Mike Hermanstorfer told KKTV. "It's just an absolute miracle."