What Gave Me Heart Failure...It Was The Opposite of Marvelous

Yesterday we took the 3 kids swimming at the Rivermead Leisure Centre. They have a big pool called "The Lagoon" that's really cool. It has a huge slide - it's 3 or 4 stories tall - and the big kids rode down it with Steve a few times each. It lands in a side pool that's sort of connected to the main pool. There is a little dividing wall between the 2 pools, but water and people can go over the wall.

The main pool is sort of fan-shaped with the narrow end being deeper (about 1.5 meters) and the wide end being very shallow with little steps for little kids to sit on. Julie could sit on the top 2 steps without the water coming up to her armpits. She liked crawling along the top step in the water. There is a baby pool on the side opposite the slide pool. It sat up a little higher and had a metal railing around it. There was a little slide inside the pool itself and then a ramp that went down into the main pool that the kids could slide down. The entrances to both side pools (baby and slide) were facing the shallow end of the main pool so that when they turned the wave machines on each 1/2 hour, the waves wouldn't get into those areas.

They had big floatey raft-things that the kids could lay on. They were about 3-4 inches thick and very stable - they didn't bend and were very stiff. We would haul the kids "out to sea" during the wave times and hang on to their little rafts and ride the waves with them.

We were all in the baby pool area at one point. Steve and I were sitting with our backs to the main pool watching the kids. Caleb was on the slide in the pool and Audrey was on the ramp. She had a little kick board and was laying on it to slide down the ramp. At one point, Steve was fussing at Caleb for jumping off the slide. During their interchange I looked around for Audrey.

I couldn't see her.

My heart stopped. I very loudly interrupted Steve's lecture to Caleb and asked, "WHERE'S AUDREY?" Caleb said, "She's over there" and pointed behind us to the big pool. I stood up (while holding Julie) and saw her just on the other side of the baby pool. She was underwater, and was flailing around. We were about 4 feet higher up than she was, plus there was a 3-4 foot railing separating the 2 pools. I saw that there were at least 3 grownups within 4 feet of Audrey and I shouted, "HEY! HEY! SOMEBODY GRAB THAT GIRL!" Before I got the last word out, Steve had clambered over the rail, jumped in, and pulled Audrey to the surface.

Our little family unit went to shallow water and Steve and I took turns holding her. She sputtered just a little and cried a lot. We ended up staying 45 more minutes and she had fun. Turns out, her little kick board got away from her and she was going after it. She didn't realize the water was deep.

I was disgusted by:
1 - the lifeguards. Not only did they not see this happening, they didn't take action, nor did they come over to check on her after Steve hauled her out.
2 - the adults who were so busy chatting that they didn't see her when she was flailing around. Then they just stood where they were frozen when I yelled at them to grab her.

Steve managed to slice his big toe during his rescue mission. It bled a lot. Eww. A little price to pay for the life of our daughter.

I still get the yucky pit-in-my-stomach feeling thinking about it. I know these moments come when you have children. These life-and-death situations. I hate those moments. I think this is the closest we've come to death. Granted, we were still a bit away from it and I do think somebody would have seen her, but still. We were closer than we've been with any of the kids.

I have to stop writing now because I'm getting sick to my stomach. It disturbed me that much.