Infant CPR

When Carson was 5 months old, the Princess stayed home to take an important business call. I passed by her while carrying Carson to change his diaper. Suddenly, he started shaking uncontrollably, while looking up at me from the changing table. I didn’t know what was wrong and screamed to the Princess. She immediately hung up and came in to see what was wrong. She instantly knew that he was choking, because he was turning blue, and began to perform infant CPR. Meanwhile, I was simply freaking out and helpless.

Fortunately for us, the Princess had just been to a company sponsored class on infant CPR. Carson had apparently burped, as babies do, and the spittle had lodged in his windpipe. The Princess turned him upside down and hit him hard on his back. She did this several times while firmly telling me to call 911. I called 911 and they sent an ambulance before I had even hung up with them. The Princess continued infant CPR, which included blowing into his nose and mouth when she was convinced he still wasn’t breathing. Fortunately that worked, but it is truly a last resort for an infant as it could just as easily kill them.

The emergency crew told us that he would have died before they arrived, which was only 10 minutes after I called, were it not for the Princess’s actions. Needless to say, I took the same class from the same instructor a few weeks later. Since that day, I have had to perform adult CPR/Heimlich on the Princess twice and infant CPR on Carson once. (Please note that you should not consider this article comprehensive on either procedure and that performing either procedure incorrectly may cause further harm to the victim. Please refer to professional pamphlets, articles or classes for the proper procedures for both types of CPR.)

The helpless look in Carson’s eyes, as he was literally choking to death in front of me, haunts me to this day. He has had to have stitches twice, while I watched him scream in fear and pain, but those moments, while brutally hard for a parent, pale in comparison to his (and our) near death experience.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for any stay at home parent to learn infant CPR, which is quite different than adult CPR. Parents should require it of their sitters for the occasional time that they go out and perform CPR on their marriage. But that’s another story.