Mum’s horror at finding daughter face down in bath after prising bathroom door open & the frantic race to try & save her

FROM the moment Syd arrived, I knew she’d be the life and soul of the party. 

She stole the spotlight from her dad and nan after being born on their shared birthday – April 1, 2008.

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Her mum Samantha found her daughter face down in the bath[/caption]

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Syd was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes after losing a lot of weight[/caption]

Holding her in my arms, I laughed and said, “Looks like we’re going to need a bigger cake each year!”

As Syd grew, her confident personality shone through – and even from a dot, she had grown up beyond her years.

On her first day at preschool, she said to her teacher, “Shall I help you line all the kids up and get them to the toilet?”

She was still in a nappy herself, but it didn’t stop her wanting to help.

Her dad, Jeff, and I later split, but he always remained in her life, and we always got on.

Eventually, I met her stepdad, Matt, and when baby Ivy arrived, Syd took to being a big sister instantly.

Like all siblings, they bickered, but they were always quick to make up.

“Come to my room and we can watch a film,” Syd would say, poking her head into Ivy’s room.

In 2019, after she lost a lot of weight over a short period of time and couldn’t stop drinking water, Syd was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. She was 11 years old. 

At first, I felt devastated, but she took it in her stride, making sure she looked after herself and educated others about her condition. 

“My pancreas doesn’t quite work as it should, so I use insulin,” she’d explain. 

Rather than injecting herself, she had a pump fitted which delivered insulin continuously to her body.

The small device, roughly the size of a deck of cards, can be worn a bit like a walkie-talkie, and is attached to a thin tube that is connected to the skin.

And Syd never let it stop her from doing anything, always living her life to the fullest. 

After we took her and Ivy to the local dry ski slope, Syd made a decision. 

“I want to be a snowboarding instructor,” she told me. 

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Syd was a great older sister to Ivy[/caption]

We began to look into snowboarding courses in Austria for her after she finished her GCSEs. 

It was something to look forward to, and in the meantime, she juggled her studies with a part-time job in a local café. 

“Your Syd is such a big help,” her boss told me one day.

“She’s not afraid to get stuck in, and the customers love her.” I’d never felt prouder.

Everyone in our hometown of Fordingbridge, Hampshire, knew and recognised Syd.

I always let her dye her hair, and its ever-changing colour became her signature style.

Syd’s first seizure

After her exams, Syd went to stay with her dad in Guernsey for a few weeks.

“Mum, can I come off my pump for a bit and go back to daily injections?” she asked me before she left. 

“I’d rather you stayed on your pump,” I said. But I knew I had to let her make the decision for herself.

Only a week later, her dad called and said, “Syd’s had a seizure. We’re in hospital.”

She’d never had one before, but doctors said it wasn’t linked to her diabetes. 

Worried, when she arrived home, I pushed for an MRI scan, but was told she didn’t need one.

Then one morning, weeks later, I went in to wake her and found her face down on the floor. Knowing she liked to pull pranks, I said: ‘Come on, Syd. Up you get.’ 

But when I prodded her with my foot, she leapt up screaming, completely delirious.

Panicking, I realised she’d just come round from another seizure, so I emailed the doctor and asked for an MRI again. 

“She had a seizure five weeks ago, too,” I told the doctor. 

However, he referred her to the epilepsy clinic instead.

“In the meantime, be careful when bathing and swimming,” he warned. 

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Syd dreamed of being a snowboard instructor[/caption]

While we waited for an appointment to come through, life carried on as normal.

A few weeks on, I woke her early so she could wash her hair. 

It was Halloween and my birthday, so we’d planned to celebrate later. 

“Up you get, love, we’ve got a big day ahead of us,” I said. 

“If you don’t wash your hair now, I won’t be able to do anything with it tonight.”

While she groggily got up and headed for the bathroom, I got back into bed with a cuppa, waiting for her to finish.

But after 15 minutes, I grew concerned. 

Pulled her out of the bath

“I’ll check on her,” Matt said. “I’m desperate for a wee anyway.”

But when he knocked, she didn’t respond, and panicking now, I grabbed a pair of scissors and used them to unlock the door from the outside. 

The shower was still running and had flooded the bath.

She was face down in the water. “She’s had another seizure,” I screamed, pulling her out. 

Matt called an ambulance while I started CPR.

Her gran was with us too, and when her sister tried to walk in, I shouted, “Mum, get Ivy out of here.”

The ambulance took half an hour to come, and paramedics then spent an hour trying to bring her back.

But it was too late, and as she was pronounced dead, I felt my heart shatter.

Grief blurred the next weeks until we were able to hold Syd’s funeral. 

We kept it small, just me, Matt, Ivy, her dad, grandparents, Matt’s girlfriend and her half-brother. 

As she loved music so much, we all picked a song each, with Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) as her final one.

Music was a big part of her life, and whenever we went anywhere in the car, we’d end up singing along to something at the top of our voices. 

“Mum, can we put Shania Twain on?” she’d ask. She had such an incredibly varied taste in music – she was never stumped for choices. 

We’d sing along to anything from Green Day, Wheatus, and Avril Lavigne to Dean Martin and Tom Jones. She never missed a word and never skipped a beat.

When her cousin took her to see Green Day, she said Syd was belting out every lyric.

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Samantha and her partner, Matt took Syd and Ivy on cruise ships for holidays[/caption]

Miss her every day

In time, an inquest into her death found she’d died from drowning after she passed out in the shower, which filled up during her seizure. 

But while we had to accept she was gone, her memory had to live on.

When Matt and I took Syd and Ivy on cruise ships for holidays, Syd was excited to discover that people often hid rubber ducks around them for other passengers to find. 

She quickly made a game of seeing how many she could spot. 

“Syd loved spotting rubber ducks on cruise ships,” I said to Matt.

“Let’s get some and have people leave them around the world on their travels.”

I started a Facebook group and it quickly took off.

People from Fordingbridge and further afield showed interest, so I ordered a whole range of rubber ducks and we set up an area in the pet food store we ran, which we called The Duck Pond. 

Seeing it filled with ducks made me smile and our customers loved it too.

We created a label with a QR code so people could let us know where their duck had travelled to. 

One person took his snowboarding and soon others had gone as far as Japan, China, Thailand and New Zealand.

I was so thrilled, but then I had another idea. “Maybe we can get a duck custom-made to look like Syd,” I said to Matt. 

Before long, I had a thousand Syd ducks, with rainbow hair like hers, ready to give away in the shop.

“They look just like her,” I said to Matt, as we put them on display.

Now, my darling Syd, although we miss you every day, I know you’d love the idea of people taking you on their travels with them, and leaving a piece of you in all corners of the globe.

This way, you’ll continue to bring the light and laughter you brought in life, every where you go.

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Syd ducks, shared in her memory[/caption]