The summer is here. For many, that means more time with the kids, vacations and fun in the sun. Sadly, that won’t be the case for one Philadelphia family. This summer, Brittney McWhite will be mourning the loss of her two children, 11-year-old London Marie and 14-year-old Wadale.
McWhite and her husband made the heartbreaking decision to take both children off life support after they drowned at a family party.
When McWhite went to look for her children, they were nowhere in sight.
When the mother and her children arrived at the event, they went their separate ways. “When we got there, I was like, OK I’ll help set up the food. Kids were playing in the pool. They were playing a game where you go down Marco Polo and you hold your breath,” McWhite told FOX 29.
While McWhite was away, she noticed that she no longer heard the sounds of children playing. Instead, there was silence. When she went to check on her children, there was no one in sight.
The two children were at the bottom of the pool.
“They weren’t in there for more than like three, four minutes,” McWhite said. “I was looking around or whatever, I saw the water. I didn’t see nobody.” Eventually she found them at the bottom of the pool. When London and Wadale were pulled from the pool, they were unresponsive. They never regained consciousness. Instead, the two children were on life support for a week.
McWhite decided to take her children off life support.
London would have turned 12 earlier this month. Wadale recently graduated from eighth grade. McWhite and her husband ultimately made the decision to take her children off of the life-sustaining machines.
“Keeping my child hooked onto a machine for the rest of their life is not ideally what any parent should want for their children, so today me and dad decided to end life support,” she told FOX 29, hours after she made her decision.
McWhite wants to warn other parents.
While McWhite seemed to have come to grips with her decision, she still expressed her heartbreak. “I know they’re at peace, it’s just very devastating. Not to lose one child but two. I think that’s more challenging because you can’t stomach that, but you have to keep going.”
As McWhite keeps going, she wants to warn other parents about how quickly things can go wrong.
“You can be in the water for a minute. Until you actually get a pulse, you’re losing oxygen and in the severity case they lost a lot of oxygen,” she said.
Over 900 children drown each year.
Every year, over 900 children die from drowning — that’s 1 in 4 of all drowning deaths in the US — according to the Children’s Safety Network.
To prevent these types of tragic deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests children learn basic swimming and water safety skills. They advise that pool owners have a fence that encloses the swimming area. Parents and other caregivers should closely supervise children when they are in or near the water. Children should wear life jackets and parents should learn CPR.
McWhite echoes the advice: “Always have a set of eyes. Prevent your kids from playing games. Make sure the pool is safe. Make sure if it doesn’t look right, don’t do it. Because once you lose your child, it is hard. It’s really hard to stomach.”