Amid devastation, a family in Turkey is reunited with their 'miracle baby' found in earthquake rubble

Rescues of February 14, 8 days after the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey 1:17

(CNN) --

Like those of thousands of families in Turkey and Syria, the lives of the Fansa were shattered by the earthquakes last week.

But Nilay Fansa and her husband, Cengiz, are also holding on to their "miracle baby."

The earthquakes on February 6 trapped the family under the rubble of what had been their seven-story apartment building in Kahramanmaras, Turkey.

Nilay was released about 14 hours later, then her 4-year-old daughter, Nil, and finally Cengiz.

The body of the middle child, 2-year-old Alin, was found four days after the quake, and the Fansas assumed that baby Birce had died as well.

• They survived in the rubble: 6 amazing rescue stories after earthquakes

The Fansa family—Nilay and Cengiz with their daughters Birce, Alin, and Ni—in December.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Fansa family)

"We were still in shock after the event," Nilay told CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday through an interpreter.

"At that time, being the fifth day, we thought we would be seeing his lifeless body."

Little did they know that minutes after the earthquake, a neighbor who thought they were following the sounds of a cat helped find 8-month-old Birce alive in the rubble.

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“When the earthquake happened, she was thrown from the fifth floor,” Nilay said.

“She basically fell out of the window.

And that's how she survived too;

otherwise, the place where she had been her cot was completely crushed under the concrete.

"That's why he's a miracle baby," she said.

After Birce was rescued, she spent five days in intensive care with a broken leg, a fractured skull and some bleeding on her brain.

None of her rescuers had identified her, so social media users shared photos of her in hopes of finding her family.

Among the ruins, Nilay's sister mentioned to a neighbor that the Fansa were still looking for the baby.

• Hope after tragedy: the emotional rescues of survivors after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria

Birce's doctors say he is on the road to recovery.

(CNN)

“I saw how they took her out the first day,” the neighbor replied, according to Nilay.

“In fact, I saw a rescue only half an hour later.” Through social media posts, the family identified baby Birce and learned that she had been taken to the Adana City Teaching and Research Hospital, the largest trauma hospital in the earthquake zone, where they finally met.

"Of course, I am devastated for my other daughter," Nilay told Gupta.

But Birce is on the mend and "God willing, hopefully she'll be released soon."

Survival stories are becoming rarer eight days after the earthquake, which killed more than 41,200 people in Turkey and Syria.

• They survived in the rubble: 6 amazing rescue stories after earthquakes

The United Nations Children's Agency, Unicef, has said it is "tragically clear" that the number of children killed by the quake "will continue to grow."

James Elder, UNICEF spokesman, said 4.6 million children live in the 10 disaster-affected Turkish provinces, while in Syria, 2.5 million children have been affected.

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes the need to “focus on trauma rehabilitation” for survivors.

The WHO representative in Turkey, Batyr Berdyklychev, highlighted the "growing problem" of a "traumatized population", predicting the need for mental and psychological health services in the affected regions.

"People are only now beginning to realize what happened to them after this period of shock," he said in Adana on Tuesday.

-- CNN's Amanda Sealy, Nadia Kounang, Talia Kayali, Aliza Kassim Khalidi, Rhea Mogul and Sana Noor Haq contributed to this report.

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