Mom's Warning About "Motherhood Battles" After a Riptide Almost Killed Her Twins

In an instant, Sarah Grundy's day at the beach with her twins went from a typical Summer afternoon to a traumatizing experience.

While this mom from Philadelphia and her 14-year-old girls were enjoying the water at Long Beach Island in New Jersey, Sarah walked out of the waves to put her sunglasses on the beach. Suddenly, she heard her daughter Isaana scream, so she turned. All she could see was the top of her other daughter's head and went racing back into the ocean.

"Moments prior when I turned around, the water was just up to our knees! So there was no concern at all," she told POPSUGAR. "The water was ERIE calm. It happened in ONE INSTANT that suddenly they were getting dragged under water."

The girls were caught in a riptide, and instead of swimming parallel to shore, which is what should be done in that situation, they were fighting the waves. "I'm a good swimmer, surfer (sort of), and have swam in the ocean all my life, but nothing I did could get me to them fast enough," she said. "The harder you fight a riptide, the more chance you have of sinking, and [them fighting] it was sinking them even faster."

Isaana was holding her sister, Lezele, to help keep her from drowning as they continued to struggle underwater. In order to save them, Sarah explained that a group of six people had to create a chain to get them out of the water and safely onshore. "It took all of us. Me screaming, the locals being stronger and smarter than I was to get them out of that current, and Isaana holding Lezele above the water, screaming for help loud enough for me to hear, until we got to them," she wrote on Instagram. "If it weren't for the guards and the men on the beach that day . . . "

The girls were gray by the time they made it to the shore, and an ambulance immediately took them to the hospital. "No. joke. It was one of the scariest moments of our lives," Sarah wrote. "Motherhood. We choose our battles. All can't be won, but I'm trying to be grateful for those I have won . . . we nearly all lost that battle."

The doctor explained how lucky Sarah was that neither of her girls had water in their lungs after he examined them for potential secondary drowning symptoms, something she had never heard of before. "After a near-drowning incident you can actually 'drown' 24 hours later, if you're not careful," she explained. "It happened to one of the dads on the island who rescued a kid, just the day before."

Two other families at the beach unfortunately weren't as lucky that day, as the riptides took the lives of two people, and now a year later, Sarah wants other families to realize what she took for granted:

Now, Sarah and her girls talk about safe swimming practices regularly, check the water for riptides, and always stay near a lifeguard. "I see kids in the water alone all the time and now it scares me to death because I saw how fast and how fierce that water truly was," she said. "I've always loved the sea, but what I realized after she nearly gobbled both my babies in one gulp, was that I didn't have enough respect for how powerful she truly is, and now I see."

After almost losing her girls, Sarah wants parents not only to be vigilant when their kids are by the water, but also to appreciate when things are calm. "Win the important battles and save your energy for them," she wrote. "Don't let the little sh*t (that really gets tough) be where you place your focus, because we just never know when we will need to fight a much bigger battle and you'll want to conserve your strength for it."