Miracle baby born with heart outside of body survives, stars in incredible footage

A British baby girl entered the world with her heart outside of her chest, but her future is looking bright.

At mom Naomi Findlay's nine-week scan, she and her partner learned their child would be born without a breastbone and with the rare condition ectopia cordis, which affects just five to eight cases per 1 million live births. The child was then given a 10 percent chance of survival. Her parents were advised to terminate the pregnancy—but Mom and Dad didn't lose hope.

Naomi delivered her little gal on Wednesday, November 22, via C-section, so there would be less risk of infection, trauma or hurting the baby's heart. Just 50 minutes after the birth, surgeons at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester in the U.K. operated on the baby three times to place her heart back into her body. The surgeries were all successful, and the child's heart is now covered with her own skin. Pediatric cardiologist Frances Bu'Lock told BBC that the family is lucky in that the baby's heart is structurally normal, with no abnormalities with the chromosomes. Surgeons think this will be the first baby in the U.K. to survive with this condition.

The parents named their miracle kid Vanellope, after the Wreck-It Ralph character Vanellope von Schweetz, who had a glitch but turns into a princess. Vanellope's parents found this to be a perfectly fitting name for their little one born with a tiny glitch.

In a BBC video showing Vanellope's heart beating outside of her body, her dad says, "She's got more strength than you could ever imagine. She's fighting it all the way and she's defying everything."