BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – A mother in Argentina says she fell to her knees in shock after finding her baby alive inside a coffin in the morgue nearly 12 hours after the girl had been declared dead.

Analia Bouter named her newborn Luz Milagros, or “Miracle Light.” The tiny girl, born three months premature, was in critical but improving condition Wednesday in the same hospital where the staff pronounced her stillborn on April 3.

The case became public Tuesday when Rafael Sabatinelli, the deputy health minister in the northern province of Chaco, announced in a news conference that five medical professionals who were involved in the birth have been suspended pending an official investigation.

Bouter told the TeleNoticias TV channel in an interview Tuesday night that doctors gave her the death certificate just 20 minutes after the baby was born, and that she still hasn’t received a birth certificate for her tiny girl.

Bouter said the baby was quickly put in a coffin and taken to the morgue’s refrigeration room. Twelve hours passed before she and her husband were able to open the coffin to say their last goodbyes.

“I moved the coverings aside and saw the tiny hand, with all five fingers, and I touched her hand and then uncovered her face,” Bouter said in the TeleNoticias interview. “That’s where I heard a tiny little cry. I told myself I was imagining it – it was my imagination. And then I stepped back and saw her waking up. It was as if she was saying, ‘Mama, you came for me!’ ”

That’s when she dropped to her knees on the floor in shock.

A morgue worker quickly picked up the girl and confirmed she was alive. Then Bouter’s brother grabbed the baby and ran to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, shouting for the doctors.

The baby was so cold, Bouter said, that “it was like carrying a bottle of ice.”

She says the family plans to sue the staff at Hospital Perrando in the city of Resistencia, for malpractice, and they still want answers. But they’ve been focused for now on their little girl, whom she described as amazingly healthy despite being born after just 26 weeks of gestation.

So far, she hasn’t needed oxygen or other support commonly provided to preemies, Bouter said.

“I’m a believer. All of this was a miracle from God,” she told Telam, Argentina’s state news agency.