It was every mother’s worst nightmare.

Fortunately, Lindsey Kelly was in the right place at the right time when it happened.

The right place was Sentara Belleharbour’s emergency room. The right time to be there was when her 4-week-old daughter, Alice, stopped breathing.

“I thought she was going to die,” Kelly said. “I saw them doing CPR on my baby, and was already trying to figure out what to do. I’ve had both my other girls in the hospital before, and nothing was quite this scary.”

Kelly had visited the doctor more than once and when Alice stopped eating was when Kelly began to get increasingly concerned.

The day after Christmas, “she was barely responsive,” she said. “You’d poke her and she might open her eyes. I picked her up and she was limp. Her skin turned a grayish yellow. I was really scared at that point.”

After arriving in the emergency room, doctors found Alice to be hypothermic so they wrapped her in blankets to try and warm her.

“Then it all happened,” Kelly said. “I’m still kinda blurry about how it all happened. I just remember the doctor was standing over her and said she’d stopped breathing. The next thing I knew they had her across the room and were doing CPR on my baby.”

After what Kelly said was “a few minutes” the doctors were able to remove mucus buildup and Alice was breathing again.

Shortly after, the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters picked Alice up and took her to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, where she stayed the next week to recover from what the doctors found to be a bronchial infection.

“There was really nothing more we could’ve done but come to the hospital a little sooner,” Kelly said. “There wasn’t much more to do except wait. We were just so lucky to have been here when we were, with the doctor standing over her. If anything or the timing was any different… I just can’t imagine.”