Olympic skier Bode Miller and his wife Morgan Beck Miller described the heartbreaking moment they discovered their 19-month-old daughter had drowned - in the hopes they can prevent other parents from enduring the same tragedy.
The couple lost their daughter Emeline “Emmy” in June after she fell into a neighbour’s pool, on a day that started like any other day.
“It was a normal day,” Morgan Miller told the Today show of the June day, describing how the kids regularly spent summer days swimming at their neighbours - who were “like family to us.”
After attending a birthday party, where Emmy had fallen asleep in her mother’s arms, the family returned home to say goodbye to Bode before he took the couple’s oldest daughter to her softball game.
Emmy kissed her father, a habit that was not “typical of Emmy,” before waving and saying bye.
Then Miller took the kids to their neighbours to swim.
Miller was engaged in conversation and having a cup of tea while watching her daughter running back and forth when she noticed it was too quiet.
“All of the sudden, it was just too quiet for me,” she recalled. “We’re in mid-conversation and I stood up. And I turned and I went right to where the boys were and I said ‘Where’s Emmy?’”
The tearful mum described the moment she realised the door to the backyard was open.
“My heart sank and I opened the door and she was floating in the pool. And I ran and jumped in,” she said.
After pulling her toddler daughter out of the water, Miller performed CPR while her neighbour called 911. At the hospital, doctors originally told the Millers their daughter’s chance of survival was likely.
However, it soon became clear that Emmy hadn’t received enough oxygen to her brain for too long.
It was then that the couple learned drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death in children aged one to four - a morbid statistic they’d never learned at paediatrician appointments and check-ups.
And despite having taken the proper precautions, including enrolling their children in drowning prevention classes and having a fence installed around their pool - they lost their daughter.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t pray for the opportunity to go back to that day and make it different. But now we have this opportunity to make other parents’ days different,” Morgan Miller said.
Moving forward, the couple, who are expecting a daughter in the autumn and who struggle with guilt as they continue to mourn the loss of Emmy, want other parents to be aware and vigilant.
According to Bode, part of the reason they’ve shared their story is in the hopes that “maybe we’re preventing it from happening to somebody else.”
In 2004, drowning resulted in 175,000 deaths in children and youth under the age of 19, according to the World Health Organisation.
To prevent unintentional drowning, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises parents to “never - even for a moment - leave children alone near open bodies of water.”
Parents are also advised to install fences around pools and to have knowledge of basic CPR and life-saving skills, as every second counts.
