Be safe with child CPR training in your own home.

Hello everyone! Our last health-themed post of January might be the most important: infant and child CPR. Would you know what to do if your little one started choking? 

Like all new parents, we had the best intentions when it came to being prepared for our little one. We took parenting classes, birthing classes, practiced swaddling, read up on nutrition, and delved into the ongoing vaccination arguments. But between running to classes, heading to the baby store for yet another nursery item, going to weekly prenatal appointments, making plans to see friends before I claim to be busy for the next 18 years, all while still trying to maintain our normal career-oriented city lifestyles, we let one thing slide: infant CPR classes. Okay, we thought, we’ll take the path of least resistance. We signed up for an online class through the American Red Cross and for $25 and 3 hours of couch time we’ll be experts in infant CPR!

We pressed play on the first video clip and … 5 minutes into it and it’s already time for a bathroom break. 10 minutes in: snack time. 20 minutes in: okay, let's just skip to the actual lifesaving clips. We watched once and thought we had it figured out.

But it’s funny how adding a baby to your life makes you forget everything. I’m not even sure we knew how to swaddle anymore, even after all that doll practice. We promised ourselves we’d revisit the videos as soon as we got a moment to ourselves.

Flash forward a year later, when said newborn is now a bona fied toddler, eating solid food, walking, finding stuff on the floor, putting it in her mouth—eek! We realized we don’t really know infant CPR, and no amount of online videos are going to drill it into our heads. We needed to learn and practice from an expert in person.

We looked around Westchester for some options. There are several classes available at hospitals, but most were for certification, meaning they were hours long on the (precious) weekends, and about $60 a head. I didn’t need to become a paramedic, I just needed me and my immediate family to be able to resuscitate my daughter should she swallow too big a piece of food.

Then we found Your Home CPR, an in-home training class that can be customized to each client. For about $90, a professional emergency responder will teach you and up to 9 other people how to help a choking victim of any age. One Sunday I rounded up my family members and we attended the 90-minute class from the comfort of my living room.

The class had everything I needed. The format was a mix of video clips, personal direction from the instructor, and dummy practice. He brought dummies in all sizes with pressure points so we could learn exactly how hard we would have to compress to help a child’s heart beat. Practicing on the dummies was what really made me feel like I was prepared for a real-life scenario. It’s one thing to be told to turn your kid upside down and pat them on the back, but it’s another thing to actually do it with an object the heft and shape of your baby. It was also great to be able to include our daughter’s aunt and grandparents, who might not normally be available or willing to sit through a 3-to-6-hour weekend class at the local hospital. Here they could come over and learn how to help our daughter breathe if something goes wrong during snack time.

Our instructor let us slow down the lesson for any questions we had, and let us practice with the dummies as long as it took for us to feel comfortable. We also learned how to use an AED (that defibrillator in all the medical shows.) Feeling empowered to actually help my daughter in a crisis was probably the best $90 and 90 minutes I’ve ever spent. And the peace of mind knowing grandma and grandpa can do it too makes meal times a lot less stressful.

If you have a child and haven't been training in CPR yet, I urge you to take a class. If you don't have extended family, round up some other moms and it could be as little as $10 each to learn.

The business is based out of Ridgefield, CT and serves Westchester County. You can find out more at yourhomecpr.com. 

SPECIAL OFFER: Mention Baby Got Chat when you book and receive a 20% discount on classes scheduled Monday through Friday before 3:00pm.

I hope that's an incentive to get informed about CPR safety. As always, check our website for events and weekly library programs. 

See you next week!

Andrea