Trista Hamsmith is a mother from Texas who tragically lost her 17 month-old daughter Reese back in December after the child swallowed a battery. Now, she’s going public with her story in the hopes that no other parent will need to go through this.

“Kids are dying,” Hamsmith, 39, told the “Today” show. “We’ve got to do everything we can to get this information to parents and put pressure on the industry to make changes to protect the kids.

Reese typically had tons of energy, so Hamsmith notice right away when the child started acting lethargic. When she became lethargic and started wheezing, Hamsmith took her to the pediatrician, who said that it was just the croup, a common ailment small children suffer from.

Soon after that, however, Hamsmith noticed that a button battery was missing from the remote control in her home. When she brought Reese to the emergency room, it was confirmed that the toddler had swallowed the battery, and that it had burned a hole in her esophagus.

“This story needs to be told,” Hamsmith said. “It didn’t have to happen.”

Reese was able to go home in October after having surgery, but she was soon back in the hospital when physical problems arose once again.

“We found out that a fistula had been created, which is like a passageway,” Hamsmith recalled. “There was a hole burned through her trachea and through her esophagus. When that tunnel formed, it was allowing air to go where it didn’t need to be. Food and drinks also went where they didn’t need to go.”

Reese had a feeding tube and was sedated from then on, and she sadly passed away on December 17.

Dr. Emily Durkin, the medical director of children’s surgery at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, warned on “Today” that swallowing batteries is incredibly be dangerous because they can easily get stuck in the esophagus, which has two ends that are narrow.

“If you get a narrow, flat, pancake-like button battery that gets stuck at one of these natural narrowings, then the front wall of the esophagus collapses against the button battery and the back wall,” said Durkin, who didn’t treat Reese. “[This] completes that circuit, and the electric current actually flows through the esophageal tissues. And when that happens, it starts to kill the tissues at the burn.”

As for Hamsmith, she just wants manufacturers to make safer device covers so that this doesn’t happen again.

“We just need safer batteries,” she said.