It was about 6 p.m. on Aug. 14, 2007. Emily Foreman had just put her 13-month-old twins in the bathtub. She turned on the water and plugged the drain. Then she remembered she had pork chops on the stove that she needed to turn over.
“Figured I could leave to go into the kitchen to check on the dinner,” she says. “When I came back from going to the kitchen, I found Mallory, my little girl, floating face up.”
Emily started rescue breathing, then chest compressions. Then the first responders arrived.
“Words can’t describe what you’re feeling at that moment. Horror, disgust—all of the emotions,” Foreman says. “It forever changed us as a family. Everything was perfect until then.”
Because of Mallory’s death, Foreman became involved in Infant Swimming Resource, a 46-year-old program that aims to prevent pediatric drowning through instruction to children as young as 6 months. CrossFit Kids has partnered with the program.
“My goal in all this is to help other people,” Foreman says, “so that they don’t have to go through the sorrow that me and my family had to go through.”
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Additional reading: Not One More Child Drowns: Infant Swimming Resource by Marla Carnes, published Aug. 29, 2011.