Charlize was monitored for a full day and was doing great. Her symptoms never worsened and she was mainly just exhausted.
Quietly, silently, quickly.
My daughter almost drowned.
We were all there and none of us saw her slip under the water, but it still happened.
Embarrassed. Mortified. Ashamed. Guilt-ridden.
This experience was a difficult and painful life lesson. My heart hurts. I feel ashamed and guilty that my daughter was fighting for her life underwater — drowning — and I didn’t even see it.
She could have died.
The emotions that come with an experience like this are expounding. Not all parents who walk through something like this get to hold their children at the end of the day. My heart grieves for them. I’m so thankful for the brave mamas who have gone before me and shared their own stories of secondary drowning because they are the reason we wanted to take Charlize to the ER to make sure she was okay.
While my heart is working through a lot of things right now, I know ultimately, God loves me. He will see me through this. I am a good mom, but accidents — terrifying accidents that shouldn’t happen — happen.
For anyone feeling the need to say something mean, judge me or the situation itself, express negativity, don’t. I guarantee whatever you have to say, I have felt. An incident like this comes with an array of emotions. Many that I haven’t even processed yet. But I know this was an accident. And my daughter survived. My life changed. I changed.
We were given many wonderful recommendations regarding pool safety and I wanted to share one in particular that I loved. Of course, swim lessons are important, but also it is a great idea to have someone be the “lifeguard” at the pool. Their only job is to watch the pool. They can’t play with the kids, have conversations, go anywhere, etc. And the adults just take turns carrying on this role. We will be implementing this in the future whenever I feel ready to take the kids to the pool again.
I hope, if anything, by reading this you are encouraged to take extra safety precautions by the pool. May this horrifying experience be something that you can learn from too.
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