30 seconds

"Mama close your eyes..... Mama open them......"

I am under a big white sheet with the biggest blue eyes smiling at me.

"Mama close your eyes.....", tears just stream a hot liquid down the side of my face and then I kiss those warm cheeks filled with rosy life cuddled up next to me.

I have my little boy.

I cannot forget one detail. It is forever imprinted in my brain.

Beautiful day. Sunny... blue skies, puffy white clouds.

Adrayn was sitting on the outside of the ladder to the pool as Jeremy went in with Sloane inside the house to get ready for work. I was beginning to mow the back yard with an old push mower as Adrayn was filling up a medicine syringe in the pool and squirting me with every pass of mowing... Giggling the whole while.

When Jeremy came out to head to work my attention moved.... 30 seconds.

Jeremy asked where Adrayn was. I ran to the pool. He was there.... At the bottom..

I turned into a machine right then.

My emotions were gone. I jumped over the side and scooped up his limp body... I noticed he was twitching under the water. I then laid him on the ground and saw that his face was blue... he was not breathing. Jeremy placed Sloane down and ran over in disbelief. I have never seen fear in this man like I did yesterday.

He started rescue breathing and then placed Adrayn on his side.

I picked Sloane up and dialed 911. The ambulance was in our backyard in 2 minutes or less.

Jeremy got Adrayn breathing prior to the ambulance so we started seeing the blue slip away to gray... Then flesh... I then jumped in the ambulance with Adrayn and Jeremy stayed back with Sloane to meet us at HCMC by car.

We were rushed to the ER to get a chest x-ray. Adrayn was talking on the ambulance ride but when we arrived to HCMC he was lethargic so more tests.

After 2 hours we were sent to pediatrics for overnight supervision.

My beautiful little boy is here.

I urge you to all rethink those summer pools as it was so silent, and Adrayn was always confident in the pool prior to this incident (always with supervision, of course). He was dying and I didn't know....I wasn't there when my baby needed me. Thoughts still race through my mind... what was he thinking, what if Jeremy didn't ask? I have to let it go and just be thankful.

I am... I am sooooo thankful that he is alive, and that my reaction was survival mode, and that Jeremy asked where he was and was a pro at rescue breathing. I am so thankful that Adrayn is sitting next to me with a new chance at life and yapping my head off about snowballs and staining my shirt with cherry juice.

It hit me last night when he was wide awake in the hospital at 10pm..."Mama close your eyes... Mama open them".... this would have been a game that we almost never got a chance to play....

Hug your babies extra tight tonight. Be thankful. It only takes 30 seconds.