Judah’s Story

It was late September and I distinctly remember the sound of my children’s feet, slapping against their flip flops and dodging the ends of the towels that were dangling over each of their arms. I remember touching their heads, one-by-one and holding that moment to my heart for as long as I could. I am not sure why that moment grabbed me like it did, except that I needed to make that memory because it would be the last of it’s kind that I would ever be able to make.
Thirty minutes later I heard a piercing scream, pleading for my husband to run. It took me a long time to realize that the scream was coming from my own lungs. I was frozen, paralyzed in horror, unable to pick up my three-year-old, Judah, who was floating, unresponsive and facedown in our friend’s apartment pool.

iI remember yelling, “God don’t take him from me...not my baby...please not my baby…” as my friend ran by me to pull my son’s limp body from the water. My husband went on autopilot and herocially performed CPR at the side of the pool.


At some point, Judah threw up on him but he never woke up. We would later find out that throwing up during CPR is an automatic response that a person’s body does and not a sign of coming around.

Someone called 911 and our friend took over chest compressions for my broken husband.


EMS came after what seemed like hours but I was told was only around nine minutes later. My husband had gone into shock from pumping his own son’s chest and trying to breathe life back into his lungs. My other children were crying and screaming for their brother, as the trauma of watching him die latched onto their hearts. I was crumpled in a stranger’s arms, dry heaving and begging loudly for God to spare my baby boy.


Judah was sent to the best pediatric trauma unit in Houston. I rode with him in the ambulance as the medics worked on his beautiful little heart in the back of the truck.

Judah had been in cardiac arrest for nearly 35 minutes when they finally got his heart beat back. He was hooked up to life support and we were led into a cold, stark room that stunk from years of coffee-fueled night shifts.

It was there that we were told that our child had less than a 30% chance of survival. We were told that if he did survive, he would be in a vegetative state, dependant on machines for the rest of his life. The injury to his brain, the lack of oxygen for so long, would be too much for him to recover from.


We prayed and cried hard through the course of the next two days at his bedside. We held his cold hands, hoping for even the smallest twitch of his fingers. Judah’s daddy and I could do nothing but watch helplessly, as every sign of life slipped from our little boy.


And then it was time. We were told that all tests showed that his brain had died.


We were shuffled into another blank room where we hopelessly and numbly prepared for his organs to be given to other children who were in need of them. I can’t really tell you what all the papers said. I was not present enough to know much more than how to sign my name. Shock had fully taken hold of every part of me.

After the donation caseworker finished with us, we walked into Judah’s PICU room one last time to find it filled with multiple doctors and nurses running around the machines that were endlessly bleating. I heard a doctor yell, “I’m calling it. Time of death, 9:51pm”.


Judah’s little body couldn’t take any more. He had gone into cardiac arrest for the third and final time. He was done. He had gone to be with Jesus before us.


The last shall be first….


Judah had only been missing from us for a total of a few minutes the day of his accident (the time between one headcount of the children at the pool to the time we found him in it). He had decided to slip back into the pool to join his siblings, but didn’t have his puddle jumper on and we didn’t see or hear him leave our side to get to the pool. His three-year-old brain thought he could swim without his flotation device. He had no idea that the puddle jumper was the only thing that kept him floating and that he couldn’t yet do it on his own.


Judah had been given swimming lessons. We were doing what we thought would keep him safe. He had his puddle jumper that I made him wear anytime he went into the water. We kept close watch on him and all of the kids….as much as we knew how to do at the time...and he still drowned. It only took around a minute from when he was sitting right next to me, wrapped in his towel, for him to slip away quietly and reach the water, and maybe another minute to find him in it.


What we didn’t know is that he needed to learn survival swim (infantswim.com, infant aquatics.com). He needed to have been taught how to save himself, if he were to ever get in trouble in the water. What we didn’t know is that one of us needed to have been within arm’s reach of him at all times around the water, because he was a non-swimmer. What we didn’t know was how quickly drowning can happen (it can happen in the time it takes to answer a phone or send a text). What we didn’t know is that drowning is the number one cause of death in children ages 1-4 years old and number 3 in children 5-19.


We didn’t know these things until we were watching our baby boy die in the hospital. We didn’t know, until it was too late for our Judah.


But now, having read our story…..you know.

I beg you to keep your children safer around the water. Know more than I did. Do better than I did.

Kids should know how to save themselves if they get into a water emergency, by getting on their backs, floating, and crying or yelling for help. They just need to learn to get into a position that they can sustain and be able to breathe until help arrives.


Adults should have 100% attention on the children, in or near water, 100% of the time. Non-swimmers should never be outside of an arm’s reach of a parent or an adult near water. If you don’t get in the water with your kids, they will think it’s ok to go to the water without you.

Don’t rely on puddle jumpers and floaties. They can actually assist in a drowning and even if they don’t, they can give children under five a false sense of security. Kids that young can’t make the connection that the puddle jumper is what is keeping them up, and not their own ability and they are more likely to go to the water without it on, because of the over-confidence that wearing them gives them.

Create barriers to getting to the pool or water. Pool fences, pool alarms, alarms and locks on all windows, doors and dog doors leading to the water. Why? Because every layer of protection you have will help keep them from drowning, in case one of the other layers fails.

Learn and know CPR. It can mean the difference between life and death.

Please, learn from our pain, so that you never have to learn from your own.

#judahbrownproject

dontletthemdrown

beavoice