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He tucked into his birthday cake, played with the balloons and opened his gifts on his second birthday on 19 May.
Lucas Bothma from Witbank has been dubbed the “miracle child”, not just by his grateful family but also by the hospital staff who helped save him.
Late last year, the tot's life hung in the balance after his frantic mom, Chantelle (36), found him floating face down in the swimming pool at their Witbank home.
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The single mother of two was making a bottle for Lucas and thought he was with her mother, Marietjie Harmse, in another room. When she discovered that he wasn’t there, she went back to the kitchen looking for him.
“He usually likes unpacking the containers from the cupboards so I went to see and that’s when I saw that the gate (to the swimming pool) was a little open, so I went onto the porch and saw him floating in the pool.
"I shouted out, ‘Please Lord, please no, Lord, help him’,” Chantelle recalls.
She jumped into the pool, but he was too heavy for her to lift so she screamed for help.
In a panic, the whole family rushed to Life Cosmos Hospital while Chantelle tried to perform CPR on Lucas.
“He coughed up some water and vomited, but he still wasn't breathing," she says.
Chantelle still doesn’t understand how Lucas managed to open the gate to the pool, because it's heavy and even adults struggle with it.
Doctors resuscitated Lucas and he was put on life support and a ventilator because he wasn't breathing on his own. They warned the family that if he survived, he may have had brain damage.
Chantelle says that the incident happened around 11am and by 4pm Lucas was airlifted to Netcare Garden City Hospital in Johannesburg for specialist care.
His mom, his sister Claire, grandparents, Marietjie and Koos Harmse, travelled nearly two hours by car to get to the hospital in Mayfair West, Johannesburg.
“Lucas is a miracle child. I'll never forget him,” says Dr Palesa Monyake, who works in the hospital's paediatric intensive care unit.“Neurologically speaking, we were very worried about Lucas as it wasn’t clear how long he'd been in the water, and he had to be resuscitated several times. In the end, all our prayers were answered, and he pulled through."
As Chantelle recalls the traumatic chapter, she starts to cry.
“The hardest part for me was that I couldn’t hold him, couldn’t talk, sing, play or even feed him. But I had a lot of faith – I knew that he was going to walk, and that he wasn't going to have brain damage.
“It was a fight and a half to walk that path in faith. He was in the paediatric ICU and we couldn’t go in. He was surrounded by machines and all you could hear was the beeping sounds coming from his machines – he was just lying there in an induced coma.”
"Lucas was on maximum respiratory therapy as he wasn't breathing on his own," Dr Monyake says. "From the pool water in his lungs, he had severe aspiration pneumonia. We were also worried about hypoxia to the brain and the potential for brain damage, given that his air supply had been cut off for an uncertain length of time."
Lucas went into cardiac arrest twice during his 29 days in hospital, his mom says.
“When his heart stopped the second time, the doctor told me that she thought they'd lost him”.
After almost a month in hospital, doctors predicted Lucas would make a full recovery.
Chantelle says Lucas has changed quite a bit since the incident.
“He expresses so much more love now. He loves to cuddle and he's a constant reminder that God is here for us, especially on the hard days.”
Before the incident, Lucas hated the water and never enjoyed the pool. Chantelle says that he constantly wants to go back into the pool, but she keeps him away.
“He'll swim when he's older. For now, I've covered the pool. I close the toilet lid and even buckets of water have lids on. I'm always aware of where Lucas is and I’ve learnt to communicate better – I don’t just assume that he's with a family member."
“I think every parent needs to be more aware of where their children are.”
Extra source: Netcare
