Nolan Filipiak, a bright, bubbly 2 1/2-month-old baby, almost didn't make it.

"I woke up, and he looked kind of gray," says his mom, Michelle. This all happened February 16. "At about 7 a.m., I put him in a bouncy chair. My husband walked over and noticed he wasn't breathing."

Michelle thought about driving her then-3-week-old son's lifeless body to the hospital.

Instead, she called 911.

"I was trying to keep myself together, because I knew I wanted to get him back to life as quickly as possible," Michelle says.

The woman on the other end of the line made that possible; that's eight-year veteran East Lansing 911 dispatcher Rebecca Nelson.

"I thought, 'I'm a mom. If you had to call 911, what would you want to hear on the other line?" Nelson says. "I'd want to hear confidence, and someone who knew what they were doing."

Luckily for Michelle and Nolan, Rebecca did know what she was doing. She calmly instructed Michelle to perform CPR on Nolan. They went through four repetitions until Nolan started breathing again. The 911 call tells the heart-wrenching tale.

Rebecca Nelson was honored Tuesday with a life-saving award from East Lansing.

Mom Michelle says she couldn't be more thankful. And from the looks of things, Nolan feels the exact same way.

Nelson was honored this week in recognition of National Telecommunicators Week.

The baby, Nolan, is now healthy; he'd been suffering from RSV, a respiratory illness.