Thursday, November 20, 2008

First near death experience

Today Coen is exactly one month old. I thought, for sure, that he would be much older when he scared the life out of me with a near death experience.

My mom and I arrived in Dallas to visit my grandparents. She has a two door Tahoe, so I climbed in the back to get him out of his car seat. I noticed that he had some spit up in the corners of his mouth, but nothing on his clothes, and he looked fine. I lifted him out and handed him to my mom standing outside of the car on the sidewalk. Suddenly Coen started to choke or gag. (He ,like all newborns, does this every so often. More often when my mom is holding him. We are convinced he does it on purpose to scare her. My mom doesn't have a record of quick and appropriate responses in scary situations. Not unless you count panicking and shaking your hands as a quick appropriate response.) Usually he gags, coughs something mysterious up, and swallows it again. This time, though, he didn't do that. He kept choking and stopped breathing. I heard my mom say, "Oh, Oh Amy! He's choking!" I looked at his face and saw him turning red, all the while failing to cough up anything and continuing to gasp for air. He was completely silent. She shoved him into my arms and dissapeared into my , now narrowing, line of vision. As I turned him over, my head clouded with thoughts. "Why isn't he breathing? What do I do? Is he ok? What if this doesn't work?" However, my most prominent thought was "Well Amy, this is how it happens. This is the day you lose your child". Thankfully, working with children, I have taken child CPR numerous times. I turned him over and hit his back. I hit him harder than I ever want to hit him again. I turned him back over and looked at his face and he started to cry. I'll tell you, it was the sweetest cry. Whew. He started breathing again, and began to smack down the blockage. My mom handed me the bulb sucker thing I carry in the diaper bag. She was brilliantly digging it out of my bag the whole time. Duh! Awesome job Grammy! I guess it's my turn to be the panicky mom. :)

So, we made it one month. Now, lets see if I can make it 18 years. Coen will be fine, I'm sure. I just don't know if I can handle another scary situation like that. Boys.

2 comments:

JustinP8 said...

Glad he's okay! That's pretty scary! Ashley and I will have to take a CPR class now...when the time comes.

Amy said...

CPR. May you never have to use it, but good to know just in case!