3-year-old Girl’s Near Drowning on Fourth of July

Blake Wilson and his wife Torie were celebrating at her parent’s house. Their three-year-old daughter Lorelei was swimming in the pool with family and friends.

“She had never taken swimming lessons before,” recalls Torie, ”so we always relied on floaties while she was in there, just because of her age. But she's always been super comfortable, you know, being in the water.”

“It was a normal day,” says Blake, “You know, but she knew that she had to have her floaties on."

While everyone took a break for lunch, Lorelei sneaked back to the pool unnoticed without her floats on. Sometime later one of the kids discovered her in the water, then ran to get grandpa Mark, who remembers, “He said, 'Somebody's already in the pool.' And as soon as he said it, I knew it had to be her.“

“I had only been inside a few minutes before my oldest came in and said that Lorelei was in the pool,” said Torie.

“When I got to the top-top step,” said Grandpa Mark, “I could see her laying on the bottom of the pool. And my heart just broke.“

Mark quickly jumped in and pulled Lorelei from the pool. She wasn't breathing and was unresponsive. He remembers, “Her lips and around her eyes was-was dark blue. Her face, not as blue as the, you know, around her lips and eyes, but uh it was, it was real scary. I thought she was gone.”

Torie says, “I was petrified. I felt helpless. I didn't know what to do. Uh, it's a very, very scary feeling.”  

“I was broken at that moment,” said Blake, “I was staring at my baby girl, who was blue.”

“We've had CPR training," says Mark, “So we knew what to do. I got her on her side, and I stretched her arm out and, you know, everything they tell you to do.”

“At that point, everything was outside of my control. Uh but the one thing that I could do was pray,” said Blake.

Torie agrees, “We all prayed constantly. Uh and just, again, just panic and fear. I didn't know what was gonna happen.”

“I tapped her on the back maybe three or four times and by the grace of God she just – she took a breath,” said Mark.  

Lorelei was breathing but remained unresponsive when she arrived at the ER.  

Dr. Mayeaux and his staff at Georgetown Memorial Hospital were the first to treat her. “Lorelei was in critical condition when she came in. She was in respiratory distress - her vital signs were somewhat unstable as far as her respiratory condition.”

A chest x-ray revealed that one of Lorelei's lungs was full of fluid. Her family and hospital staff knew she needed a miracle.

“The doctors and the nurses, they were praying right there with us,” says Blake. “You know, everyone wanted this positive outcome.”

Dr. Mayeaux recalls, “I called in her family. Uh, I wanted them to pray. I wanted all of her supportive staff to be there to be able to pray for her and with her uh parents to let them know that they're loved and, you know, God is here.”

Lorelei was airlifted to Medical University South Carolina due to the severity of her respiratory condition. Amazingly the next x-ray showed the fluid in her lung had vanished. 

Torie thinks back, “When we got there and they took x-rays of their own there, we discovered that there was, the fluid was not in her right lung at that point. I believe deep down that that was God”

That night, while most people were watching the 4th of July fireworks, Torie and Blake were carefully watching their little girl in the hospital.

Torie states, “I was concerned, just because she had not fully woken up yet, uh, and said anything to us. She would kind of rouse up a little bit, but she had still never fully opened her eyes. I can remember me and my husband would watch the monitor like a hawk. They had told us what her oxygen level needed to stay at.”

For over 30 hours the Wilsons prayed and waited, then, they heard something wonderful.

Torie smiles and says, “About 2 o'clock that Sunday morning she woke up, and she turned, and she looked at me and she said, 'Mama.' And I went over there to her, and it's nothing happened at all. She was talking just completely normal, and she-she remembered what happened. She knew what happened.”

Blake states, “She told us that she snuck up on the deck really quietly, and she held her finger over her mouth and tiptoed. And that she held her nose and jumped in.”

Torie smiles, “She asked me, she said, 'Can we go back to Mimi and – Mimi and Big Daddy's house and go swimming?' And I remember saying, 'No, we're not going swimming any time soon.'"

Lorelei made a full recovery. The Wilsons say they are grateful to God for watching over their daughter and will always remember his faithfulness every 4th of July.

“Oh, it's nothing but the Lord,” says Mark. “I mean...He did it all. All I did was pull her out of the water. He took care of everything else.”

“They told us that we were very, very lucky that day,” says Torie. “Because a lot of the cases don't turn out that way. They considered her accident a near-drowning accident. And just for her to come out of that and not have any permanent damage at all, there is no doubt in my mind that that was God looking out for her. “

Blake humbly states, “The 4th of July uh – it's a celebration of life now. You know, we were not promised the outcome that we got, but we prayed for it and we received it.”