A TikTok personality from Texas has shared the harrowing experience of discovering her two-year-old daughter lifeless beside a backyard pool. This terrifying event unfolded after she left the toddler in her father’s care for a mere ten minutes.

Mara Doemland, a 32-year-old mother of six, recounted to People magazine the distressing moment she returned to the pool area only to find her daughter, Sunny, had turned blue and was not breathing. Mara, known to her 174,000 TikTok followers as TheAmazingMara, has since expressed her ongoing struggle to cope with the traumatic incident, which occurred on July 29.

The situation was further complicated when social services launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident. Despite the inquiry into the family’s parenting practices, the case was eventually closed, as authorities found no evidence of “neglectful supervision.”

Mara detailed the events leading up to the near-tragedy, explaining that she and the father of her children were visiting a friend’s home for a day of swimming in their backyard pool. While her five, eight, and twelve-year-old children enjoyed the water, and Sunny sat by the pool, Mara stepped inside briefly to change her three-month-old baby’s diaper.

Mara recalled the fateful incident in painstaking detail. She told People that she was at a friend’s house with five of her children and their father to take a dip in their backyard pool. 

She said she briefly went inside to change her three-month-old baby’s diaper, while her children – aged five, eight, and 12 – played in the water and Sunny sat outside the pool. 

‘I had to go in to change the baby…’ Mara recalled in an emotional TikTok video posted days later. 

‘There were four other adults outside, and I don’t blame anyone but the one I looked in the eye and said ‘I have to change the baby, watch the kids’.’

A Texas TikTok star has opened up about the horrifying moment she found her two-year-old daughter almost dead beside a backyard pool after leaving her under her father’s watch

Mother-of-six Mara told People magazine that she briefly left the pool area to change her baby’s diaper, and came back to find her daughter Sunny (pictured) had turned blue 

‘I’m gone for 10 minutes, and I come back outside because everyone’s screaming,’ she told People.

Mara said the horror dawned on her as she saw Sunny – who did not know how to swim and was not wearing a life jacket – lying on the pavement, with her body turned blue. 

The Texas mom said Sunny had drowned in the pool and her eldest daughter had pulled her out. 

‘I just started screaming and crying, and I called 911,’ Mara said. 

‘I just remember being in shock and just saying, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how this happened. I don’t know what’s happening. 

‘Like, intellectually I can — I knew what happened — but I could not process that.’ 

Paramedics arrived at the pool, and they immediately transferred Sunny to an ambulance and began performing CPR. They rushed her to the children’s hospital, where a trauma team leapt to her aid. 

‘Sunny fell into a backyard pool & was found floating face down,’ Mara said as she broke the news to her fans on TikTok the next day. 

‘Thankfully they got her breathing again. She is admitted to hospital & has been doing very well.’

While Sunny recovered in hospital, social services approached Mara and the father of her children, and asked them to detail what happened at the pool. 

Mara said the social worker reported the father to Child Protective Services (CPS) for potential neglectful supervision. 

‘I was fine with it. I was angry at her dad for not watching her, so I wanted him arrested,’ she said. 

‘But then, having time to reflect, it was a little bit scary to hear that CPS is going to be in your lives because you don’t know what that means.

A Texas TikTok star has opened up about the horrifying moment she found her two-year-old daughter almost dead beside a backyard pool after leaving her under her father’s watch 

Known as TheAmazingMara to her 174,000 followers , the Texan also broke down in tears in a TikTok video as she revealed that she was still struggling to come to terms with the incident

Mara has spoken out about her ordeal at length on TikTok, like in the screenshot shown above

‘Most people think they come in and just snatch your children away, and that then became a worry to me. 

‘They’re going to be poking around in our lives and — not that we have anything to hide — but you hear the stories.’ 

Social services returned to her home once Sunny was discharged from hospital, and met each of her children. 

‘I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, they’re just coming to just take all of our kids,’ ‘ Mara recalled. ‘I didn’t really know what to expect.’

She said CPS took photographs of their bedrooms along with the family’s fridge and pantry, remaining at the home for around six hours in total. 

When they returned for a third time, they told Mara that her children could no longer be left alone with their father, and he could not drive them around. 

‘I had six kids to get to school or to wherever they needed to be all by myself,’ Mara said. ‘That was really challenging.’ 

Their father, who has not been named, also had to take classes about safe parenting and water safety. Meanwhile, Mara and her eldest child took counseling sessions. 

She said a social services worker would regularly drop by at their house without any warning. 

‘It caused so much anxiety for everybody, thinking we were being watched or that the kids were being watched,’ Mara said. 

‘The kids were also really scared. They felt anytime a car would come or somebody they didn’t know, they felt that they could be taken away.’ 

Mara said that the stress added extra strain to her relationship with the children’s father, who she has lived with for 12 years but is not married to. 

She said the sound of ambulance sirens still triggers a ‘trauma response’ for her, which she blames him for.   

The Texas TikTok star and mother has six children in total, including two-year-old Sunny 

‘I don’t know what to do. I keep seeing her, I keep seeing her… I was watching the kids, I always watch the kids when they’re in the pool,’ Mara said on TikTok. 

‘They had life jackets, everybody had life jackets, Sunny wasn’t even in the water, she wasn’t even swimming… I just don’t know.  

‘I was gone under 10 minutes,’ she added, while breaking down in tears. ‘I’m so mad, it shouldn’t have happened.’ 

Speaking with People, she said she still feels ‘angry’ with the children’s father.  

‘He has taken accountability, and that’s helped staying together as a family to work on things,’ Mara said.

She was also concerned that the CPS closed their case after failing to prove neglectful supervision. 

Though she was happy that her family no longer lives in fear of the next unannounced visit, she thinks their findings were lacking. 

‘My daughter almost died,’ she said. ‘The punishment for that to me was what — take some parenting classes, learn CPR? It didn’t feel like the punishment fit the crime.’ 

Mara conceded that she does not know what outcome she was hoping for, but the result ‘felt like nothing’. 

‘It kind of felt to me like, well, maybe her life is nothing if she could die and you’re just saying, ‘OK, well take parenting classes to do better.’ That doesn’t seem like enough to me,’ she said. 

Mara revealed that she has faced intense criticism online over the incident, but she wants to focus on the incident as an opportunity to learn and be a ‘resource’ for other parents. 

‘Maybe people aren’t comfortable talking about it or it’s just a hard subject,’ she said. ‘But I want to share so it doesn’t happen more.’ 

Mara has posted videos showing her daughter’s recovery, including her walking around the hospital ward and smiling as she returned home.