"No way will your baby be born alive."
Ashley Shirley, a mother from Chattanooga, Tennessee, received this brutal pronouncement from her doctors who saw all sorts of birth defects on the two-month-old baby she was carrying, CBN News reports.
The doctors said her baby was blind, had femur bones that were bowed, had a small chest cavity, had skeletal dysplasia, otherwise known as "dwarfism," and that portion of her brain was missing.
Because of the baby's lethal defects, they told her that the infant's chance of surviving outside the womb was virtually impossible.
Such devastating findings could dash the hopes of most parents. Shirley and her husband proved to be the exception. With their unyielding faith in God, the couple stayed positive.
The doctors kept pouring on the bad news as the baby grew inside Shirley. "Around 32 or 33 weeks, they started noticing just how small her chest cavity was — more red flags that it would be lethal," she said.
"Every week, I would go back, and they would look and say the same thing. They didn't know what to expect, but by the looks of it, they couldn't even say whether she'd come out breathing," Shirley said.
It got to a point when, instead of planning for the happy arrival of her newborn, Shirley began to plan for her baby's funeral.
"We were praying for the best, trusting God, but also had to prepare ourselves for the worst," she said.
On the 37<sup>th week of her pregnancy, the Shirleys prayed for a miracle while bracing for the worst.
She then gave birth to a baby she would name Jocelyn on July 7 this year, later posting her pictures together with her baby in her Facebook page.
"I was super nervous," she recalled. "I almost passed out twice because I was so anxious. All I can remember is my husband holding my hand. He laid his forehead on mine, and we were praying. All I could do was plead with God to let her come out screaming, breathing. It felt like an eternity. It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop."
To the doctors' utter astonishment, Jocelyn came out of her mother's womb with a loud scream—alive and kicking!
Shirley said her baby is undoubtedly "a miracle of God."
She attributed it all to her faith. "I don't know that I could have gotten through it without my faith," she said.
