Journee Jai Hawkins 07/31/2009
Updated: Jul 31, 2020

It was 7:00 am I woke up to get ready for work just like a did every morning. Went to check on her she was lying face down on the pillow. You see that was not alarming for me Journee had a strange obsession with smothering herself. When I would breastfeed, her she would put her entire head in my boob and then push me away for air and then repeat. It didn’t matter how you put her to sleep she would always end up face down. This time when I saw her, I thought to myself this little girl… I turned her over but she never moved, we had our routine I wake up she face down I turn her over she makes a noise and move I change her diaper kiss over her and then make her bottle and stick it in there with her. But this time there was absolutely no movement, I felt her leg it was slightly cold, so I put a cover over it. What’s so odd is I never had a bad feeling I never felt as though something was wrong. I picked her up ran in the room and yelled “John there is something wrong with Journee” These are words that still haunt him to this day. He grabbed her and attempted to do CPR, with the fear of crushing her lungs we grabbed her ran out of the house. The hospital was literally around the corner and we didn’t want to waste any time getting her there. What we didn’t anticipate was traffic. We get to the light and there is traffic everywhere I look to the left and notice a payphone. I jump out the car ran straight to the payphone while John sits in the passenger seat holding Our only daughter his only child lifeless rocking, praying, crying. The dispatcher answers the phone, " what’s your emergency", I yell "my daughter she is not breathing". I would never forget her first words were "ma’am try to calm!" down those words stung like a dagger. To be honest, I don’t remember the rest of the conversation I looked at the car and I notice there were people surrounding it and shortly the ambulance came. They grabbed Journee from my husband and said, "let’s go no