'What I learned the night I brought my baby daughter back to life.'

‘I prayed for her to open her eyes.’

At 5:11am on a quiet Sunday morning while the rest of the house was sleeping, I was frantically pumping my 11-month-old daughter’s chest and willing her to breathe. Her little face had already turned blue as she sat in her cot, slumped in an upright position, while I sprinted from my bedroom down the hall to her nursery.

She had been suffering a number of viral illnesses and this combined with sheer exhaustion, resulted in her little body being unable to continue the struggle to breathe. I had seen her through the video monitor, sitting upright in her cot, but slumped very low and very, very still. I immediately knew something was wrong so I bolted to her room and grabbed her from her cot. She was lifeless. Her tiny little body was cold and her face, lips and nose had already turned blue.

Stacey Gleeson's daughter in happier times. Image supplied.

'Hey Siri, call an ambulance.'

Unbeknown to me, I had grabbed my iPhone from the bedside table as I ran into her room. Upon placing my little girl’s lifeless body on her bedroom floor, I dropped my phone and saw it bounce a few feet away. I began to perform CPR on my little one and called out to my mother, who was sleeping in a room down the hall, panicking as I realised she could not hear me. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had the “Hey Siri” feature enabled on my phone. I screamed out “Hey Siri!” and when she answered, I commanded her to call the ambulance (a saved contact in my phone). Siri immediately dialled this contact and as I punched the speaker button on my phone, the voice of an emergency services worker could be heard throughout the room.

I have never in my life been so grateful for a piece of technology as I was in this moment. As the ambulance officer talked me through my actions, I performed breaths and compressions on my daughter’s tiny little body. After two rounds of CPR her face betrayed the tiniest flicker of movement as I prayed for her to open her eyes. Minutes passed as she slowly regained consciousness and as I spoke to her as soothingly as I could in the early hours of Sunday morning, she began to recognise who I was. The next sequence of events happened in a blur, as I woke my mother and urged her to get dressed, then met the ambulance officers at the door and travelled the 15-minute trip to the city hospital. Upon arriving, the ambulance officers took my little girl as I began the process of trying to get in contact with my husband. He was far away from us, only a few short weeks into his deployment and was not due back to us for a long time to come.

'My husband was 54 hours, 7537kms and four different airports away.'

Feeling like my world was crashing down around me, the medical staff carried my little one into the Emergency Department, checked her vital signs and began a long day of stabilising, testing, monitoring this little person who was our everything. By mid-morning I had managed to get through to my husband, who had begun the long and arduous journey back to mainland Australia. It would be 54 hours, 7537 Kilometres and 4 different airports until my husband would walk through our front door.

As I sat alone in that Emergency room for the rest of the day, fielding phone calls from worried family members and trying desperately to gather answers from the medical staff, I wished that I was not alone during this time. I wished that I had support and that I had a husband who could be there by my side during a crisis. My thoughts began to get darker as I watched our little girl undergo more and more testing. I watched her sleeping in my arms, wondering if this would be the last time I would ever see this sight. As the day carried on, the doctors and nurses monitoring her progress became less concerned, found more answers to their questions and determined that she was well enough to be discharged and sent home with me, with outpatient testing soon to follow. As anxious as I was at this decision, I was at a loss as to what could be done, so we made the short journey home to where my mother and our three-year-old daughter waited anxiously.

'I wished my husband were beside me.'

That night, I put my baby girl to bed quietly and watched her sleeping peacefully as I rocked in her rocking chair and contemplated the day that had just come to a close. I checked her video monitor was connected securely, quietly closed her door and fell into bed exhausted. I was sure I wouldn’t sleep for fear of her stopping breathing. I was sure I would never sleep again, but, at 12:45am, I heard a deafening pounding on the windows around our house. I froze in fear, thinking multiple crazed people were attempting to break into our house. I found the courage to get up and sneak to the front windows, noticing the flashing blue and red lights of a police car out the front of our house. I opened the door in alarm and was greeted by a number of police officers who told me to get my daughter back to the Emergency Department without delay, as she had tested positive to a severe and life threatening infection in her blood test from earlier the previous morning. I raced her back to hospital where we were placed in a room where, for the remainder of the day, all hospital staff were only to enter whilst wearing plastic gowns, gloves and masks, in order to limit the spread of infection.

'My daughter did not have Meningococcal Disease'

As I sat in the Emergency Department once more, I wished that my husband was there beside me. I wished that I was not back in this place, feeling so frightened, so uncertain and so very, very alone. My little girl and I waited out the day in that room, with family checking in periodically, in the hopes that there was some news. Then finally, at around 4:30pm, the doctors entered the room and congratulated us on being able to go home. Confused, I reacted with disbelief rather than joy and begged them to please tell me now what it was that they were testing for. They replied that from the previous morning’s blood test, our daughter’s blood had returned a positive reading for Meningococcal Disease. I reeled in shock as I listened to the doctors explain how our 11-month -old daughter did not, in fact, have Meningococcal Disease, but that her blood sample had accidentally become contaminated throughout the inspection process in the lab.

Our entire day of trying so desperately hard not to let our minds wander down the path of infectious diseases, blood conditions and an array of equally as terrifying illnesses, appeared to have been in vain. Not only had we been through one life threatening event with our not even one-year-old daughter, but we had just experienced a second life threatening event which had an entire family and one very far away (and very distraught Daddy) fearing the absolute worst for this beautiful little soul.

The Gleeson family finally reunited. Imaged supplied.

Late that afternoon our little girl was discharged and we were allowed to go home, with the same tests to follow, only this time Daddy would be arriving the next day around mid-morning. Needless to say, all of my questioning, all of my doubting of my strengths and wishing that I was not alone through this, disappeared as my beautiful husband walked through our front door. This past week has felt like a rollercoaster of emotions, with some days crawling by as I silently attempt to dissect every single moment of those horrible events. Other days appear to disappear in a flash, with our three-year-old so happy to have her Daddy home while also fearing his departure the following week. As I sit here writing this, I hold no ill wishes as a result of our daughter’s contaminated sample.

I do not hold anger in my heart as a result of this whole unnecessary debacle. I do however, sit a little longer with my girls, tell them and my husband as often as I can that I love them all dearly and try my very hardest to see the beauty in every day. Even though one of the two events from the previous weekend did not turn out to be life threatening at all, it did however, deeply affect our family in ways that others may not be fully able to grasp.

Because of this, even though I may still wish that my husband was by my side or that I did not have to be the strong one in times of crisis, I know that no matter how far away he is, he will always do everything in his power to return to his girls and once he walks through that door, we will all feel peace again. Until such time, this experience has taught me that I am strong, I am resilient and I as much as I hate to admit it, I am capable of saving a life. I have also learned that although the girls’ Daddy, my husband, my best friend, makes us feel whole when he is home, and I can do a pretty good job of keeping us all okay in between.

This post originally appeared on The Military Wife.