Brynlee Grace Marilou Dugger arrived at 5:11 p.m. MT Tuesday, 38 days premature, after an emergency Cesarean section.

Her parents, Kirstin and Matt Dugger, are elated — and relieved. Two years ago, Kirstin Dugger had her most recent miscarriage nearly six months into her pregnancy.

“It’s just when you never expect it to happen and when you never think it’s going to happen to you, it’s just overwhelming,” said Kirstin Dugger, 43, wiping away tears as she watched over Brynlee in the newborn intensive care unit at Rose Medical Center in Denver. “She’s our little Christmas miracle.”

A woman’s best reproductive years are in her 20s, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. By age 35, fertility declines drastically: At age 40, a woman has a 1 in 20 chance of becoming pregnant each month, by age 43, it drops to 1 in 100, and fertility ends five to 10 years before menopause, which occurs on average at age 51. Only 2.3 of every 1,000 births were to first-time moms ages 40 to 44 in 2014, a rate that’s been pretty stable in recent years, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even using in vitro fertilization, the success rate for women older than 40 is less than 5% per attempt, compared with 10% for women ages 35 to 40, according to the society. Miscarriages increase because older eggs are more prone to genetic abnormalities.

 “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened,” Matt Dugger said of his wife’s miscarriage that happened in 2014. And a man older than 40 like Matt Dugger, who is 47, also is 30% less likely to father a child than a man younger than 30, according to the medical journal Reviews in Urology.

He’s not related to Jim Bob, 51, and Michelle Duggar, 50, of Tontitown, Ark., who gave birth to 19 children over 21 years and starred in a reality TV show on TLC from 2008 to 2015.

Doctors monitored Brynlee’s health closely knowing Kirstin Dugger’s past and the couple’s ages. Brynlee is expected to remain in intensive care for three to four weeks before she heads home to Thornton.

The Duggers adopted an older child 16 years ago because they wanted children and figured that they never would have one. Their son is now 30, and they have grandchildren 10 years older than their new daughter.

“It’s a miracle,” nurse Jennifer McKay said. “I’ve been doing this 26 years, and it’s a miracle.”