"He's a chubby little boy and if he misses a feeding, we know about it," said Pastor Jacob Sheriff, the father of baby Urias who was born dead and brought back to life by the power of God.

Sheriff and his wife have five kids. He is an executive pastor at Victory Life Church which has multi-sites in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado.

Sheriff said that his wife noticed that this fifth pregnancy felt different and a little bit harder than the other four pregnancies.

August 31 was the day baby Urias was born in Durant Oklahoma. During delivery, the doctor noticed something was wrong and notified the hospital to prep the OR for an emergency c-section.

When the baby was taken out, he was blue and not breathing. Not knowing how long prior he wasn't breathing, the doctors tried resuscitating the baby for 15 minutes.

Sheriff explained that normally they will try for 6 to 10 minutes, but they were determined to resuscitate him, going longer than they should have.

His organs had shut down and there wasn't a pulse or a heartbeat. They finally got him to breathe but were afraid of brain damage.

The doctor told Sheriff’s wife that she had a 100 per cent placental abruption in which the placenta separates from the uterus. Most babies die from that because they lose oxygen in the womb. Some mothers die from it too if it's not caught early enough because of excessive bleeding.

The baby was moved to a neonatal intensive-care unit in Plano, Texas. Sheriff's wife had to stay behind to recover from the birth of their son. Within 24 hours, Urias had his first seizure and a second one following a few hours later.

A new treatment was given to Urias where his body was cooled down to 92° F (33.33°C), in order to shut down the body so the brain doesn't overreact to stress. The process takes three days and Sheriff described it as "wait and watch." Doctors told the family they could expect to be there for up to four weeks.

One of the doctors told Sheriff that "right now it's really early to tell. Babies are very durable and handle all these things differently. Your son had extreme trauma and most babies that suffer from that kind of trauma are going to have cerebral palsy and epilepsy." The Dr. said that Urias would likely suffer from seizures his whole life.

In the neurologist's evaluation, a lot of Urias' reflexes weren't present. Urias' eyes wouldn't dilate or squint to the light. He also had no suck reflex which is vital for eating. Often the baby's arms were seized up, and the family was told he may never talk or walk. He may never be able to feed himself or eat normally. Sheriff was cautioned that their lives were about to become very different.

'Very few babies make full recovery' Doctors said

Sheriff was then told that there are very few cases where babies make a full recovery and that his son will have a very hard life.

"That's when it kind of hit full force," Sheriff said. "And I had to make a decision on how we were going to move forward. I looked at the doctors and said, "thank you. Thank you for caring about my son. Thank you for doing what you do for him, and I know you're doing everything you can for him. My wife and I deeply appreciate that. But, you need to know my wife and I are people of faith and we have a lot of people praying for my son. I think my son is going to surprise you." 

The doctor responded, "I sure hope so."

After processing that conversation and talking to his wife over the phone as she's back in the Oklahoma hospital recovering, they drew a line in the sand and said, "what are we going to believe?"

"We first had to decide we were not going to let fear win. I cannot fight in faith for my son and be afraid."

Sheriff said, "my wife and I, we don't just claim doctrinal beliefs about Jesus, we have given our lives to Him. As a pastor, I've given my life for the church to lead and serve people. This is when the rubber meets the road. "Do I actually believe and am I going to live it out? We first had to decide we were not going to let fear win. I cannot fight in faith for my son and be afraid."

After the third day of the cooling treatment, the doctors were going to start reheating the baby's body. They had to be quiet without talking to him or touching him during the cooling treatment. There couldn't be any stimulants so his brain has a total chance to recover. The reheating process takes about six hours and that's when the baby's brain would start refiring again. The doctors expected him to have seizures during this process, having negative reactions to the trauma he experienced.

Meanwhile, in the hospital lobby, it was a time of prayer, worship, and praise. "We were speaking God's Word over my son," Sheriff said.

During the reheating process, there were no seizures. In the night after that process Sheriff's teammates stayed with the pastor and watched the baby on a video stream all night and both of his hands were relaxed, something the doctors never thought he would do.

Later that day, the doctors did an EEG (electroencephalography) to evaluate the electrical brain activity during this process which would say a lot about seizures. Sheriff said the neurologist was impressed as it wasn't expected for the brain to be improving that fast.

Within a day, the baby's digestive system was starting to work, he went off the ventilator on day five, every day for the next eight or nine days there would be one thing after another that would be improvements that the doctors didn't ever expect or would take weeks or months to improve.

It was all happening within a matter of days.

On day 14 the baby started taking a bottle while 10 to 12 days earlier he didn't even have a suck reflex, the doctors thought he'd never do that.

He soon started having full feedings on a bottle. After 19 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, baby Urias was ready to go home. 

A few days later Sheriff and his wife took the baby to his first pediatrician appointment. The doctor knew something was wrong prior but didn't know exactly what. After looking Urias over the Dr. said that he sees a normal baby at this age, and couldn't see anything wrong developmentally with him.

Sheriff said the doctor told them "this is a miracle baby!"

In the state of Texas, it's protocol to do blood work on newborns and then it gets sent off to the state and they do an evaluation, then send you back a score. Sheriff's son's first score when born was all zeros.

The pediatrician said he never had a baby who had all zeros and yet the baby he was looking at now is a normal baby.

Since then the baby's been hitting most or all his developmental milestones and seems normal. Sheriff said, "That's what we were praying and believing for and knew we were going to see it.

He's now three months old, has a good appetite, and exceeding all his weight goals.