"When I jumped in the pool, I turned her over and that's when I noticed she was completely blue-grey," Matthew Shortridge tells Inside Edition. "I thought, 'Dear God my baby is dead.'"
A North Carolina dad jumped into a backyard pool to rescue his 2-year-old daughter.
The incident occurred as kids were playing in the pool. At some point, 2-year-old Mila's parents took her out of the pool and took off her floaties. The toddler later made it back into the water.
Mila's older sister screamed when she discovered her face down in the pool.
Security footage shows their father, Matthew Shortridge, jumped into the water.
"When I jumped in the pool, I turned her over and that's when I noticed she was completely blue-grey," Shortridge tells Inside Edition. "I thought, 'Dear God my baby is dead.'"
Shortridge, a nurse, began CPR. A friend who was also at the pool was a trauma nurse and she began chest compressions.
"My training kicked in. I started mouth-to-mouth, and then my friend, she's a nurse, she came down immediately at the same time. She began chest compressions on my daughter," Shortridge says.
Mila's mother heard screams and ran out of the house to her daughter by the pool. She got down to her knees with her arms raised and started praying.
"I saw my little baby Mila, who was completely lifeless at the time, not breathing. It was just a heart-wrenching feeling," the toddler's mother says.
Mila started breathing again.
"When she began to cry, I knew that she was okay," Shortridge says. "To feel her heart on my chest, it was wonderful. Then I said, 'Are you okay,' and she said, 'Daddy,' and I knew at that moment, I just knew then, she's okay."
Mila was wrapped in a blanket as they waited for paramedics in Caston County, North Carolina. She spent the night in a local hospital for an evaluation and made a full recovery.
Mila's mother urges everyone with small children to learn CPR. It saved her daughter's life.
Drowning is the number one cause of death for children between ages 1 and 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
