My wife came into the house crying, handed me our 9 month old child, and said “I can’t take this anymore.” She had just experienced a parent’s worst nightmare – for the second time.
Just a few minutes earlier, my wife had been driving home with our four children; the three youngest in the back and our 8 year old son in the front. Our 3 year old daughter, in a generous act of sharing, decided to give her favorite toy to the baby.
It was a small toy and our 9 month old baby swallowed it and started to suffocate. Silently dying, her life was quickly slipping away. If this happened to you, would you know how to save your baby’s life? This is a very real threat all parents face and you should be prepared and know what to do; your child’s life may depend on it.
The first hero was our oldest son. If it wasn’t for him I don’t think our baby would be alive today. He noticed that it was too quiet and unbuckled himself and leaned over the seat to look at his baby sister. When he saw that she could not breath he became hysterical – crying and screaming at his mom about what had happened. My wife immediately pulled off the road.
Fortunately, she is a neonatal nurse who works in an intensive care unit where it is her job to save the lives of critically ill babies. When she got out of the car and saw what had happened she immediately went into “nurse mode” and started performing infant CPR.
A parent’s worst nightmare: your baby is in your arms, she is not breathing, and if you can’t save her she will die. Just writing that sentence is emotionally draining. Actually living through that, as my wife did, is difficult to imagine and she had to live through it twice! Two weeks ago our baby found something on the floor and swallowed it.
My wife was in the room with her but did not see what happened. By the time she did our daughter was unconscious, blue, not breathing, and laying limp on the floor. Nothing like this ever happened with our other three children, but in the course of two weeks our youngest child almost died twice.
Saving her life for the first time was very emotionally traumatic for my wife and it took days for her to get over it. The second time was almost unbearable and why she handed me our little girl and said, “I can’t take this anymore”. I held my daughter in my arms, she smiled at me as if nothing had ever happened, and tears filled my eyes. My wife is my hero; she saved my baby girl. I would not have known what to do.
We all know as parents that there are many things we have to do to protect and insure the safety of our children. One of those things is to have a heightened awareness of the very real danger of your infant suffocating on a foreign object.
Knowing of that danger, however, is not enough. When you check out of the hospital with your newborn they give you information on how to perform CPR. It is critical that you read and study this information and know what to do in the case of an emergency.
Baby proofing your house and doing everything to avoid this from ever happening is obviously the other thing you must do. Don’t think, however, that once your child is a toddler that the road ahead is any less dangerous. When I was two I swallowed a coin the size of a half silver dollar.
I was lucky that my 4 year old sister saw me do it and told our parents. It did not get stuck in my throat but it did get stuck in my stomach. The coin did not “pass through”; they had to cut me open to remove the coin and I have a very nice size scar to show for it.
Baby proof your house and give your children age appropriate toys. Make sure these toys have been tested and approved per ASTM and CPSIA toy safety guidelines. The building blocks your 2 year old plays with can’t be the same as the more intricate building sets for an 8 year old.
Read the critical care instructions they give you when your baby is born. Do your own additional research to make sure you fully understand how to perform CPR on a baby. Heart palpitations on an infant are different than that on a child; the same goes for back thrusts and abdominal compressions.
Do everything you can to protect your child from harm, but be prepared to save your child’s life if the unimaginable happens.
About the Author:
The author lives in California and is a father of four children ages 9 months to 8 years old. He is an inventor and comes from a family of educators with three masters degrees and a doctorate in education and 50 years of experience in the field of education and child development. His wife is a neonatal nurse working in a level 2/3 intensive care unit.
www.talkingbuildingblocks.com
