Watching your child fight to breathe is every parent’s worst nightmare.
Over the weekend this is exactly what happened to me when my nine-month-old starting to choke and gasp for air.
It happened in a blink of an eye. One moment she was contently playing on the floor and the next thing I knew she was coughing with something lodged in her throat.
I took first aid classes after I had my son so the first thing I did was check to see if I could still see the object that she was choking on.
I couldn’t and was convinced it had gone too far down her throat.
I held her, tilting her down my leg and hit her on the back to try and dislodge whatever it was and kept checking her mouth, but I still couldn’t see anything and she was still choking.
I began to panic and was close to calling for an ambulance when suddenly she coughed up the obstruction.
I couldn’t believe what came out of her mouth.
Last week my son brought home a balloon filled with pieces of foil confetti. The balloon had burst and I thought I had hoovered up all of the debris but I had missed some.
It was one of these small pieces of foil that she had picked up and put in her mouth.
I’ve seen these confetti-filled balloons a lot lately at birthdays and even at one market a large balloon filled with toys and confetti that the child bursts to take out the toys.
While these may look attractive they pose a huge choking hazard, that I myself had not even fully realised until the other night.
There are five and a half years of an age gap between my two children and I think I had forgotten just how much babies put into their mouths when they start crawling.
I had been vigilant when it came to making sure there were no small toys like pieces of Lego left lying around but never thought how something so innoxious as confetti could be so dangerous.
It was a scary lesson to learn that will definitely make me rethink what I allow my kids to bring home from parties from now on.
