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A son's life saved, a lesson for all families

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published May 9, 2006

The story is all too familiar to those of us who live in Florida.

A parent looks away for a minute, and the toddler ventures into the pool. The result is often tragic.

For Lisandra Morales, though, what happened on April 19 had a different ending, a happy ending.

After I read about it, I couldn't stop thinking about Morales and her son. I couldn't help thinking that their story might just prevent some other family from having to endure the unthinkable this summer. So I went looking for her.

When she opened the door for me at her house in a neighborhood south of Weeki Wachee, there was Sebastian standing beside her, a baby bottle with orange-colored juice in his hand. His dark hair matched equally dark eyes that brimmed with energy. As his mother told me her story, Sebastian played nearby with a white plastic baseball.

That Wednesday was supposed to be typical. Her husband, Marcos, was at work; her three older children were at school. Morales was in the family room playing with her daughter, Francesca, 2, and 1-year-old Sebastian.

Francesca went to the bathroom by herself, while Morales stayed with Sebastian. Then Francesca called for her mom to help.

It took perhaps less than a minute, but when Morales returned Sebastian was gone.

The screen door, which had been closed, was open. Morales looked out onto the patio and saw Sebastian partially submerged in the shallow end of the pool. He didn't move.

Morales recounted the story as calmly as she could, but her words painted a desperate scene of a mother trying to save her son.

She grabbed him out of the water and immediately began CPR, even though she had never been trained in CPR and had never tried it before.

She's seen enough CPR on TV and in the movies to know what to do.

Her maternal instincts overwhelmed her panic, and she breathed life into her son.

"I couldn't lose my son," she said.

Even after he opened his eyes, she kept breathing into him, hoping for a sign that he was going to live.

Then Sebastian threw up. When he started to cry, she knew she'd save him. She didn't bother to call for help but jumped into the family's vehicle and rushed to Oak Hill Hospital, just minutes away.

By the time they reached Oak Hill, Sebastian was out of danger. They kept him overnight just to be sure.

He was fine. His mother wasn't. She stayed at the hospital observing him, watching him breathe.

"For two days in a row I couldn't sleep," she said.

I asked her why she didn't call 911 for help. She'd had a bad experience calling 911, while she was living in Jersey City, she said. She called 911 about a building on fire. They put her on hold.

She didn't want to take that chance with her son.

"I know they are trained to be helpful, but emergency operators must ask too many questions," she said.

Morales, 35, is the sort of mother who gets up in the middle of the night and walks to her children's rooms just to watch them sleep, just to reassure herself that they're safe.

"They're my life," she says of her five children.

As we talked, she showed me around their not-yet-fully furnished house. (Some of their furniture is still in New Jersey.) Child-proof gates barred both entrances to the kitchen. Safety locks are everywhere. She's not a casual mom.

With her recent close call, she's not going to put a netting around the pool. Her 2-year-old can get through that, she figures. She'll have a contractor build something sturdier, something that will give her toddlers room to roam. But even when that protection goes up, she won't let her guard down. Not this mom. Never again.

--Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 9, 2006, 00:41:15]