When Shelly Cawley had to be put under for an emergency C-section, everyone was relieved when the procedure went well and the 23-year-old North Carolina woman delivered a healthy baby girl. But when Shelly wouldn't wake up, she slipped into a coma, and doctors weren't hopeful she'd ever come out of it.

"The doctors had done all they could and it was clear, they absolutely thought they were losing her at this point," Jeremy Cawley, Shelly's husband, told People [1] of those terrifying hours after baby Rylan was born.

That's when one nurse had an idea.

"We're a big proponent of skin-to-skin [contact]," Ashley Manus, a nurse at Carolinas HealthCare System NorthEast, said. "We believe it has great benefits for the mom and the baby, and we just thought it can't hurt, might as well give it a try."

They stripped the baby down and gently put her on her comatose mother's chest, with the hopes that Shelly's maternal instincts would kick in.

The newborn baby, however, was so content on her mom's chest that she didn't make a sound and fell right to sleep.

"We tickled her, we even pinched her," Jeremy said. "It took 10 minutes and then she let out a wail."

That's when it happened. Shelly's vitals spiked — she heard her baby.

"It was the crying that got Shelly going again, got her fighting again," he said. "I got my wife back."

It was another week before Shelly came out of the coma completely and had her first official face-to-face meeting with her baby, but it was that incredible moment — all thanks to her newborn baby crying on her chest — that saved her.

Now, a year later, both Shelly and Rylan are perfectly healthy and above all thankful.

"I just look at her now and think of the amazing bond we have," Shelly told People. "I can tell her when she grows up that she saved my life."