With summer around the corner in many parts of the country, children and families will be getting their backyard pool ready for those long, hot days. Those without pools will be heading to lakes or community centers to cool off. Smart parents know it takes one inch of water for a child to drown. More than 1000 children die in accidental drownings each year. Arizona mother, Julia Thrash never thought her 1-year-old daughter, Jayaz could become a statistic. Julia was battling the flu, Jayah was engrossed in a television show. The ill mother rushed to the bathroom believing her daughter was fine.
She returned to the living room five minutes later and discovered Jayah was gone. Her heart sank as she noticed the back door was open. The crack was wide enough for one tiny body to fit through. Julia hurried outside to the family pool to find her little girl face-down at the pool’s edge. She started screaming as she dragged Jayah out of the water. She hurried back inside to call 911. She began performing CPR on her limp little girl.
“It’s the worst panic and anxiety and fear and everything all at one time.”
Jayah had been submerged in the water for around five minutes. First responders quickly arrived and ushered the frantic mother into another room as they began to try and revive her lifeless, cold child.
“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 toddler was then transported to Banner Thunderbird Medical Center where soon after, Julia heard those words that are every parent’s nightmare: “We’re sorry, there is nothing more we can do.”
The little girl was pronounced dead 1.5 hours after Julia found her in the pool. Local police thought her death was suspicious so launched a homicide investigation.
Julia and her husband, Justin couldn’t hold their daughter, they couldn’t grieve for her as they should have been able to. Then quite some time afterward, the medical team made a shocking discovery. The doctor walked into the waiting room where Jayah’s parents were sitting and grieving and gave the news they never thought they’d hear. Their baby girl was breathing! Julia explained to Fox 10 News: “…I just looked at her like I didn’t understand what language she was speaking, because we had for an hour sitting there, told our baby was gone.”
Nurses contacted the medical examiner;s office to come and retrieve Jayah’s body. She suddenly coughed. “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.”
Jayah was loaded up and flown by air ambulance to Phoenix Children’s Hospital. The toddler went in and out of life many times. The medical staff warned her parents to be cautiously optimistic because of how long their daughter had been without a pulse. “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.”
To everyone’s relief, an MRI showed Jayah hadn’t received any brain damage. The child responded by licking her lips when Julia put chapstick on them. It took a while for Jayah’s recovery to begin. She had to learn to walk, talk and even smile once more. Some weeks later she was released from the hospital to return home to her loving family. Julia testified that the many doctors and nurses caring for her miracle baby said they’d never seen anything like this before in their years of practicing medicine. No one needs to tell the parents how lucky they are. When they met the first responders, the grown men had tears in their eyes. “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.”