Mum Tahlia Brown racked with guilty as her baby Totty drowns in spa with GoFundMe for her funeral

A mother whose 17-month-old girl drowned in an inflatable spa is racked with guilt she was not at home when her child tragically died.

Tahlia Brown was working when her daughter Totty drowned in a blow-up spa bath at her family home at Gracemere, in north Queensland, on September 19.

Her partner Cecil Murphy, brother and two other children were at home at the time when one of the six-year-old siblings discovered the body.

Totty was rushed to the local police station where officers performed CPR before she was taken to Brisbane Children’s Hospital.

She was placed into an induced coma and died the following day in her mother’s arms.

Family friend Alyce Pocock said Ms Brown was overcome with guilt and personally blamed herself for the tragedy because she was out of the house at the time.

‘But I’ve told her that’s ridiculous, she was at work providing for her family,’ she told Courier Mail.

‘There was no crying or screaming … she [Totty] just got up on a chair and into the spa before drowning.’

Ms Pocock said she had never seen Ms Brown ‘more broken’ about her baby girl – the latest family member to die after she lost her dad, stepdad and grandad as a child. 

Totty had only started to learn how to talk and knew phrases like ‘mumma’, ‘dadda’, and ‘puppy’. 

Ms Pocock described Totty as sweet and said she was ‘never shy’ and always happy to meet new people. 

‘No parent should live to see their own child die … the pain is indescribable,’ she said. 

Tahlia Brown was working when her daughter Totty drowned in a blow-up spa bath at her family home at Gracemere, in north Queensland, on September 19

Ms Pocock started a GoFundMe to help raise money for the funeral and send off the little girl deserves.

‘Leah & Cecil and they’re entire family have suffered the most unthinkable, unimaginable, unnatural, unfair, and tragic losses anyone can,’ she wrote. 

‘Baby Totty Girl, the shining light of Leah and Cecils life, she truly was the happiest, sweetest, most loving baby girl to ever enter our lives.’

‘I’m here to ask you all to help Leah & Cecil in the darkest days of their lives, find some peace and comfort in being able to send our sweet baby girl off in a way she deserves. A send off fit for a princess!’

Ms Brown responded to the GoFundMe in a post on September 27, thanking everyone that had donated.

‘Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Both Cecil and myself are so thankful for each and every donation for our sweet baby Totty girl,’ she wrote. 

Police will prepare a report for the coroner.