Mom Captures Last Sounds Of Daughter

Mom Captures Last Sounds Of Daughter, A Texas toddler can no longer speak, and she cries silently after a life-saving tracheotomy. A doting mother pressed record on a camera, intent on capturing her daughter in one final, bittersweet moment.The sounds of a sweet, infectious belly laugh filled the hospital room.

“She’s happier than most people,” said Amber Thomas of her daughter.Three-year-old Emily Thomas, with her brown hair and rosy cheeks, looked like any other kid as she smiled and laughed.

“Her laugh is the most beautiful sound. She has a really funny sense of humor,” Thomas said, recalling the week before her daughter’s surgery. “I had to sit there and stare at her and know I wasn’t going to hear her next week.”

Emily was about to undergo a life-saving surgery, a permanent tracheotomy. The procedure would enable her to breathe but would put a hole in her neck and render her unable to communicate vocally for the rest of her life.

For Amber Thomas, it was the only choice. But it also meant silencing one of the only sounds her daughter could make.

Emily’s communication has been limited ever since she had a stroke at 10 days old, but her mother said they always found a way to talk. It was through those precious laughs, or the noises she’d shout during Dora The Explorer, or the sounds she’d make roughhousing with her brothers, ages 4 and 2.

But two weeks ago, the vivacious 3-year-old from Tyler, Texas caught a common cold and nearly suffocated.

She was airlifted to the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas where Thomas and doctors watched over the toddler, trying to help her regain her health before she underwent a permanent tracheotomy.

On Tuesday, Emily had her last laugh. Doctors created a hole in Emily’s throat and inserted a tube leading directly to her trachea.

Although she has had a few setbacks in recovery, Emily began to breathe on her own Thursday and was taken off a ventilator.