The girl was born today in a destroyed airport compound that was turned into a makeshift medical centre, with her bed a piece of dirty plywood resting amid dirt, broken glass, twisted metal, nails and other debris.
"She is so beautiful. I will name her Bea Joy in honour of my mother, Beatriz," Sagalis, 21, whispered shortly after giving birth.
Sagalis said her mother was swept away when giant waves generated by Super Typhoon Haiyan surged into their home near Tacloban city, the capital of Leyte province which was one of the worst-hit areas, and she has not been seen since.
But, in the most tragic of circumstances, Bea Joy restarted the cycle of life.
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"She is my miracle. I had thought I would die with her still inside me when high waves came and took us all away," she said, as her teary-eyed husband, Jobert, clasped the baby and a volunteer held an IV drip above them.
The husband said the first wave that came carried their wooden home in the coastal town of San Jose many metres inland, washing all of the family outside.
"We are supposed to be celebrating today, but we are also mourning our dead," Jobert said.
He said it was God's will that he found his wife floating amongst the debris.
They were carried away for what felt like hours until the water subsided, and they found themselves sheltering in a school building where other mud-soaked and injured survivors had huddled.
The couple and their surviving neighbours subsisted there until Monday morning only on bottles of water they found among the debris. Jobert said he knew that his wife was about to give birth any day, but no help or aid had come.
The young military doctor who attended to her, Captain Victoriano Sambale, said the new mother had already broken her waters by the time the couple stepped inside the building, and then developed bleeding during the delivery.