Choking is a major worry for all parents, particularly those of babies and young children. Knowing basic first aid and CPR is the best way to prepare for an emergency situation.
Mum Natalie Beale can certainly attest to this. She says it was her knowledge of CPR that saved her baby’s life after she stopped breathing.
Natalie was feeding her four-day-old baby Kelsey at 2:30am and was exhausted. She asked her husband Richard to take over while she took a rest, according to Kidspot.
She had only been asleep for ten minutes when Richard came running saying Kelsey was choking.
I took one look at her and I said ‘Oh my God, she’s going completely blue,” Natalie, from Sydney, said.
“He called the ambulance and I just tried to clear her airwaves,” Natalie said. As soon as they explained the situation to the emergency call responder, she instructed Natalie to begin CPR.
By this point, little Kelsey was frothing at the mouth and her parents were completely terrified.
Luckily Natalie had been trained in CPR by St. John Ambulance and knew what she was supposed to do.
With the assistance of the emergency call responder, she began performing CPR.
“I just remember her saying ‘Go as hard and as fast as you can.' I’d been trained how to do it, so I knew you had to compress the chest down one-third of the way,” Natalie said.
“Watching me do those hard compressions really freaked Richard out, the whole situation was awful. For eight minutes we were doing the compressions and it was the longest eight minutes of my life.”
Natalie’s vital intervention eventually got baby Kelsey to start breathing again.
“As soon as we started the blood must have started pumping around her body because her colour started coming back. She just started breathing before the ambulance got there”, Natalie explained.
“I just went into auto pilot and I did what I’ve been trained to do,” the young mum explained.
“You don’t want to think the worst, but eight minutes is a long time to be doing compressions. I feel like we saved her life. We’re so lucky.”
Many people are hesitant about performing CPR and fear they might hurt the patient even more.
However, when performed correctly, it increases the patient’s chances of survival immensely and it has saved countless lives.
St John Ambulance CPR trainer Josh Clark says doing something is better than nothing.
“The person is already having the worst day of their lives. They are unconscious, unresponsive, they’re not breathing. In fact, they’re already dead. You can’t make that situation any worse,” Mr Clark explained.
“The only thing you can do is do CPR until the person starts breathing again. It is as simple as putting your hands on the person’s chest in the centre between their arms and you push down one-third of the chest depth,” he said.
“You do 30 compressions for every two breaths and perform that cycle five times in two minutes. It can make such a big difference.”
“If it’s an elderly person, there is a chance you would break their ribs. But everyone knows someone who has cracked their ribs and that’s not a life threatening injury. Not breathing is life threatening. By doing compressions, you’re pumping blood around that person’s body.”
If you are interested in learning CPR, The Order of Malta and St John Ambulance offer training in first aid and CPR.
