(TIME) Laignee Barron, December 14, 2017 — Against all odds, a British baby born with her heart outside her body is alive and recovering from her third surgery.

Vanellope Hope Wilkins, who was delivered three weeks ago in the English city of Leicester, was born with the extremely rare condition ectopia cordis, the BBC reports.

She is believed to be the first baby with the condition in the U.K. to survive, according to staff at the Glenfield Hospital where she is being treated.

Vanellope’s parents, Naomi Findlay, 31, and Dean Wilkins, 43, from Nottingham, told the BBC they were advised to terminate the pregnancy when ultrasounds showed the baby had no breastplate and her heart was outside her chest.

“The chances of survival were next to none — no-one believed she was going to make it except us,” Wilkins said.

Source: time.com/5062034/baby-heart-outside-body-ectopia-cordis/