CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1343668
12 March 2021 FAMILY MATTERS Survival Of The Littlest: One Mom's Mission BY CL AIRE MULLEN Nicole Burkhart is a certified Infant Swimming Resource instructor. She works with six to 12-month- olds for 10 minutes a day, five days a week, for five to six weeks to achieve skills that could very well one day save their lives. I 'm ashamed to confess what follows, but in the interest of saving lives, here you have it: two out of two of my children have had near-drowning incidents. Our family is able to retrospectively chuckle at my son's mishap, because it ended just about as quickly as it began, with my loafered husband diving fully clothed, phone still in his pocket, into the too-chilly-for- swimming water at a poolside barbecue. Our fearless toddler had decided to ditch his dinner plate and take a running leap from the lawn chair he was sharing with his dad into the deep end as the other party guests looked on. My husband drove us home that evening in his boxer shorts and didn't utter a word until he finally piped up with, "the ONLY reason Ace didn't inhale a bunch of water is that his mouth was still crammed full of hot dog when I pulled him up." I can't laugh about my older daughter's incident. In fact, it's difficult to even think about. She was barely 3 years old and had yet to learn to swim. Admittedly, we had all become far too reliant on her popular brand of clip- on toddler flotation device. Our family was enjoying a dinnertime swim at our club pool, and, while my husband and infant son splashed around in the shallow "kiddie end," I removed my daughter's float before escorting her to the restroom. As we stepped back onto the deck, I directed my typically obedient child to head to our table across the pool. Our food had just been delivered, and I went to fetch her dad and brother. And then, in the maybe 20 seconds it took for me to walk the short distance to signal to the boys in the shallow end of the busy pool, my girl quietly pencil-jumped into the over-her-head water. When I turned back to find that our table was empty, I began frantically scanning the water and stopped at the horrifying sight of a woman hoisting my sputtering, wide-eyed daughter out of the pool. I can't bear to think what could have happened