Stories of Lost Children
Chelsea's Story
by Will Leigh O'Dell, Waxahachie , TX, U.S.A.
I am Leigh and my husband is William, Chelsea was my daughter by a previous relationship that fizzled and William became the only daddy that she ever knew. We have another daughter that was born on April 9, 2005 exactly 4 years and 3 months to the day after Chelsea. She was very excited to be a big sister and that is all she could talk about for months before she came. The day Isabella was born my mother took Chelsea to the grocery store with her “I’m the big sister” shirt on and when people would comment on her shirt, she would tell them matter of fact…”I have a baby sister and I just waited and waited and waited for her.”. Our home in Waxahachie was being remodeled, and we had lost the lease on our rental house in April so we moved in with my mother in DeSoto, who happens to have a swimming pool in her back yard. We had admonished Chelsea time and time again to stay away from the swimming pool, which she had done for a whole month. She was afraid of the water, and wouldn’t go anywhere off the top step even when someone was with her in the summer. The day of the accident, May 2, 2005 was just like any other day. Chelsea asked me “Mommy can I go play with “Sister” (her dog)?” And I said “Yes, but stay on the porch away from the swimming pool” and she said “Ok” and went out to play. I sat down in a chair right next to the glass doors and started nursing Isabella. After a few minutes I couldn’t hear Chelsea talking to the dog, so I yelled her name she didn’t answer so I got up to look for her. That moment will forever be etched in my memory when I got to the glass door and saw her lying face down on the bottom of the swimming pool. Maternal instincts took over and I set Isabella on the floor and flew out the door. All I remember is hitting the top step of the pool and then grabbing her and hauling her out of the water. I laid her on the concrete next to the pool and saw that she was blue around her mouth and eyes. My main thought was “I have to make my baby breathe” so I began CPR all the while screaming her name and “God please don’t take my baby” I did about 4 rounds of CPR and continued to turn her over on her side when she would expel the water and vomit. Then I grabbed her up and ran in the house to call 911. Then I took her back to the poolside so the rescue people could find me without having to search the house. I continued CPR until the first police officer on the scene took over then the paramedics immediately after him. I told them that I had to get my newborn daughter and they told me to go on. When I got in the house, another of the firemen had picked Isabella up off the floor and was comforting her. I asked him to call my mother at work and he handed me the cell phone and said “If you’ll dial the number I’ll talk to her” so I dialed and he talked to her. She headed straight to the first hospital to be with Chelsea. I found the next door neighbor in the front yard and asked him to call my husband at work, not knowing that my husband had left an hour before to come home. When A.J. (our neighbor) came in the house, there was some kind of misunderstanding and I grabbed the phone and was talking to James (my husbands boss) and told him that Chelsea had fallen in the swimming pool and they were taking her to the hospital. He told me that William had left an hour before. He works in Corsicana, which is about an hour from my mother’s home so I figured that he’d be home any time. They asked me if I wanted to ride in the ambulance with Chelsea to the hospital, and I told them no because I had Isabella, and I just felt that they could do more good without me in there being the hysterical mother. So I waited at home for William, and then found out that he’d had a flat tire about 10 minutes from home. Eventually I got into the police car and went to Charleton Methodist Hospital (in DeSoto) where they took her first to Care Flight her to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. William got to the house about 10 minutes after I left and was told by the neighbor that they had taken Chelsea by Care Flight to Children’s so he headed straight for Children’s. I rode with my mother to Children’s and when I got there my entire family was there, my mother, me, William, his mother and brother, my father, and my grandmother; my mother was constantly trying to reach my step-father who she finally got a hold of and he came immediately. I finally got to go in and see her, and it was horrible…but I knew that she was in the best possible place to get care. They worked on her in the ER and then took her up to the ICU where she lived on until Thursday morning at 1:37a.m. She opened her eyes to her daddy and me on Tuesday morning at about 3:30 a.m. and was moving her head around. But then her small body couldn’t fight off the inflammation in her lungs caused by the water, and her daddy and I had to make a decision if we wanted them to continue to try and save her or not if her heart stopped. We talked and decided that she was no longer there, and that she had let us know Tuesday morning that she knew we were there and that she was leaving us to be with Jesus. So we decided to turn off the machines, my parents and my grandmother, and William’s parents stayed with her as they turned the machines off; I personally couldn’t handle it and left the room. The nurses were wonderful, they asked me if there was anything special we wanted, and I told them I wanted to hold her, and some locks of her hair. After everything was taken off of her and they had cleaned her up William and I went in and held our angel one last time then he left and I stayed as the nurses came in to snip the locks of hair from her, and they gave me 4 of them one for each of us, William, myself and Isabella. They took hand and feet print for me and gave me the two blankets that had been with her, they put all of these things in a memory box and we left to go home. It’s been a long 16 days since we lost our angel, but we know that she’s around us always. Isabella smiles at her all the time, and we see things that we know are signs from God letting us know that our angel is ok and with him. We have a saying in our family…when someone particularly a child looses a balloon, it floats to heaven and God collects them. When you reach heaven, you receive a bouquet of all the balloons you’ve ever lost. We felt that Chelsea hadn’t had an opportunity to get many balloons saved up in heaven so at the funeral we sent close to 200 balloons up to her. The one nagging thought that bothers me the most, even though I know it shouldn’t, is did my baby wonder where I was when she was in the pool? Did she think to herself “Where is my mommy and why is she not here with me to help me?” It tears me up inside to think that she thought I wasn’t there to help her. Please visit my ^^Angel^^
www.princesschelsealeighann.com
|
