Every parent’s worst fear is losing a child.
Every year, at least 1,000 children drown. Most of these kids drown in their own backyard pools. It can only take a minute for a child to slip out of sight and fall into a pool or even go under the water in a bathtub.
One mother knows all too well how easily this can happen.
Julia Thrash was battling the flu and was home with her daughter.
She had to go to the bathroom and left her 1-year-old in the living room watching television. When Julia returned from the bathroom, Jayah was gone. Julia looked up and noticed the back door was open.
She said:
“It’s the worst panic and anxiety and fear and everything all at one time.”
She ran outside hoping to find Jayah toddling around outside.
What she saw instead was horrifying. Her baby was floating lifeless in their pool near the edge. Julia screamed and pulled Jayah from the pool. She administered CPR and called 911. The baby had been in the pool for an estimated five minutes before she was pulled out.
Julia added:
“It’s like your worst nightmare ever coming true, you know you hear about it all the time, and then it’s actually happening in your own house, in your own pool, with your own child.”
The first responders worked hard to save the baby.
They transported her to Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, but Julia was given devastating news. She recalls hearing the words:
“We’re sorry; there is nothing more we can do.”
Baby Jayah was pronounced dead a little over an hour after her mother had found her in the pool. The family was devastated. To make things worse, the police department declared the baby’s death suspicious and launched a murder investigation.
Julia and her husband were not allowed to hold their baby one last time or tell her goodbye.
Then, the medical team who had tried to save Jayah made a shocking discovery. After being pronounced dead, the baby had started breathing again.
Julia said,
“…I just looked at her like I didn’t understand what language she was speaking, because we had for an hour been sitting there, told our baby was gone.”
The nurses explained that while they were in the room contacting the medical examiner to come and retrieve Jayah’s body, she coughed. Then, started to breathe.
Julia explained:
“She had a bounding pulse, her heart just started beating, just like that. She had been laying on the table, and she just started beating again.”
They started working on the baby again and life-flighted her to Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
In the life flight, she passed in and out of consciousness several times. Her parents were told to be cautiously optimistic because she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Because she had been without a pulse for so long, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to function if she did survive.
Julia added:
“They really didn’t think that she would ever recover. Kids just don’t recover from drownings. It was awful to sit and see her like that and not know, is her brain going to work? Is she ever going to be okay? Will she ever talk again? Will she ever do anything like she did before? It was tough because we didn’t know.”
But Jayah did recover.
Shockingly, an MRI showed that there were no signs of brain damage. Then, when Julia put some Chapstick on Jayah’s lips, she licked them.
Still, Jayah had a lot of work to do. She had to learn how to walk, talk, and even smile again.
It was a few weeks before Jayah was released to her go home. Numerous doctors and nurses told the family that they had never seen anything like it during their years of working in the medical industry. Jayah’s parents know how lucky they are to have her.
Julia said:
“I’m just thankful and thankful to God for giving us this gift and to be able to sit here and say to you, I have a miracle, and it’s Jayah. it’s amazing.”
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