Worried, AIBU? Police and ambulance

[MumofHennHals]

We had to call an ambulance, my 8 month old baby has flu and he went completely unresponsive, febrile convulsion and turned blue.

The ambulance arrived, so did the police? The police checked my other child and looked in the fridge and said 'decent food'

The ambulance determined it was his flu / temperature.

We have no issues within the family, happy and healthy household.

Thinking back this has shocked me, a moment of fear for my son's life and the police turn up too? I felt investigated for no reason!

Why would this happen?? They left quite happily, but now I'm over thinking will someone be getting in touch?were they concerned? It's been nearly 48hours now.

Am I being unreasonable to myself and over thinking? Xx

You haven't done anything wrong, remember this isn't personal. There will be babies out there who have been harmed and the police are looking for them. This is a good thing.

I hope your baby is ok now

Thank you!! This puts things into perspective. I think I was just so scared in the moment anyway, when something happens you don't expect ( I.e police turning up at your door at the same time ) it panics you even more.

Having two babies ( 4yo and 8 month old ) with Flu, it meant I haven't got on top of putting my clean clothes away - I'm over thinking did they think the piles of clothes were messy 😭 and will refer to CP?! the police officer did say 'I've got 3 kids, ones 10 months old. I'm not judging!!!! Just want to make sure everyone's ok'.... I felt judged HAHA

Trust me they won't judge over regular household mess. There have been some high profile child deaths recently as as result of abuse or neglect, it's possible that due to the symptoms your child has that it could overlap with something that could be more sinister and it was felt police needed to do a bit of a welfare check. People are always much more cautious for young babies, for obvious reasons.

OP, please don’t feel judged. Child abuse can and does happen in really ‘nice’ families, with ‘good’ parents. You don’t have to have a posse smoking and drinking on a sofa in your front garden to be a ‘problem family’, so the police are hopefully thinking that they’ll randomly check anyone they can. Struggling families will benefit from being flagged early too, it benefits everyone, both individually and as a society.

I understand your feeling but I bet part of the shock is the fact your child was so ill you called an ambulance. Just that by itself will be a shock to you.

I hope your son is better now.

And don’t worry about your laundry 😊.

Police can help ambulance to get faster to hospital if needed and be an extra set of hands. Don't worry about it. Hope your child is feeling better soon.

Thank you!!! I really appreciate your reply. You're probably completely right, but the lack of sleep ( staring at baby breathing like a hawk ) and the anxiety of it all- it's made me worry, we've never had any SS involvement- never needed it. So checking my children like that, when my son needed medical support seemed really shocking and it's taken me back.

My son was born 8 weeks premature with a collapsed lung, it's no surprise he reacted badly with Flu. Poor mite. He's recovering really well now, so now I'm having time to over think xxx

Thank you 😭 when you've got two kids down with flu, the basic house tasks just go out the window and my house reflected this on Monday! - just laundry, a box to go into the loft and the washing up from that night hadn't been done as we was calling the ambulance instead!! - I know he said 'I'm not judging' I think now I've got time to reflect, I'm getting a bit overwhelmed as to why they came & what they thought!

Thank you xx

It’s probably standard procedure given the horror stories we hear in the news.

I hope all is well with your baby.

Social worker here 👋🏻

I promise you're fine. Please don't worry about washing. I have three baskets to go away. It's life. It means you're washing clothes.

I hope your little ones are feeling better x

I watch a lot of ambulance/ police programmes and they always send the police if they think a baby/ child might potentially die which is what they would have thought could be a possibility if your baby was blue and unresponsive. Try not to worry they were just doing their job and sounds like they weren’t concerned at all

When you have a normal family life, you may not realise the difference between messy because small children and illness and ‘neglect/dangerous messy’.

As a foster carer I worked with families and saw baby photos. The police will have no trouble telling the difference.

That doesn’t mean that children are only abused in messy homes- of course not- but your mess is not what the police were looking for.

I think I'd find it more odd if someone had two young children, had an ambulance out to one of them and the house was immaculate!

Hope your son is ok now x

“I think now I've got time to reflect, I'm getting a bit overwhelmed as to why they came”

Because children and their welfare are everyone’s business, and the emergency services are called to lots of homes and it’s a really good way to just do spot checks, especially with babies not attending school, probably not attending nursery, with no way of communicating to anyone, it’s definitely a good thing. I’ve been in so many houses with official type people, and not once was untidiness flagged other than a general ‘bit untidy’ comment after the event, made to each other and not recorded. Things like no food, rotten food, toilet filled with faeces (and no report made), drugs lying around, dirty pets, unsuitable living conditions for children etc, these are the things they’re looking for.

The police attendance will be simply due to the categorisation of your ambulance call. I’m assuming this will have been sent to the ambulance crew as a Cat 1 call, based on what you said to the 999 operator, and must have gone down the route of a none breathing/potentially cardiac arrest situation when triaged over the phone.

In children, this will automatically trigger a police response for these incidents. This is an automatic response, and police will always be allocated when it triggers.

Hi OP, if you called ambulance stating your young baby was unresponsive then ablativ ambulance service will have contacted police to attend as well, this sounds so awful but it will have been in case your sweet baby didn’t pull through, police have to attend ALL reports of sudden and unexpected deaths. And in these circumstances, foul play would need to be ruled out.
This probably sounds sickening to you but rest assured it’s for the right reasons, so things don’t slip through the net so to speak.
So glad your little one is feeling better.

You are overthinking.
I'm really sorry your baby was so ill. Really glad he is recovering well.

In another family where the parents are struggling so much that the child is actually in danger, it might only be at a crisis point like that where the authorities have a chance to notice if something is going terribly wrong. There have been too many tragedies where a child has died and the newspapers give a huge list of events where someone should have noticed the child was in danger.

Your child was not in danger. Everything is ok. The checkup didn't do anyone any harm but if they do a spot check like this every time there's an opportunity, some children's lives will be saved. This seems like a good thing no?

When you put it like this, I can see it in a different light. Thank you xxxx

Crikey. If they looked in my fridge the day before big shop day they’d not be saying “decent food” that’s for sure! But my DC is very well fed regardless it’s just that the only thing she eats from the fridge is cheddar cheese and carrots which we always have!

Clean clothes in piles and a fridge with fresh food in are signs of a normally functioning household. They would probably be pleased to see that.

Distressing explanation follows. Trigger warning.

If, for instance, you said to 999 that you weren't sure if your baby was breathing, then it would have gone out as a paediatric cardiac arrest call. Which at least gets a rapid response! But it is absolutely normal for one of those calls to also be responded to by the police. This is in case it actually is a real cardiac arrest, and the baby can't be saved. There is then a joint health/police/social services investigation. Which is horrific trauma to put innocent parents through, but essential because of the occasional utter bastard who has murdered their child. Police can also be helpful for things like sending someone to where the other parent is, and getting them to A&E fast.

I hope your baby is well. I also have a 8 month old and sending you lots of love x

Police could have been in the area / ready to be an extra set of hands help to get to you and to hospital faster/ could be a flag on the property from a previous tenant and DV

There's mess and there's mess. Laundry and piled up plates from eating mean clean clothes and having been fed. The mess that gets SS involved is your shoes sticking to the floor and animal faeces laying around and hoarding that is a H&S risk.

Im glad they are doing this

Hopefully it will stop children being further abused

They wont care about ur dirty laundry OP

Thank you. He was blue and wasn't responding to any touch or noise 💔 it was so horrible, I probably was really distressed on the phone to the call handler. I know one of the police officer was a police medic, one that came with the police medic asked to check my other child, she was peacefully asleep and he was happy - then he checked the fridge ( I thought was random, but clearly has meaning to make sure the house is stocked? ).
I said 'sorry for the washing!' He said 'I've got three kids, I'm not judging!'

Two more police officers turned up for less than 2 mins, the police officer that was looking around explained the situation and they left ( assuming because he wasn't concerned ).

But the medic asked me questions like who lives here etc etc. he said I done the right thing calling an ambulance and that my little boy will now get the help he needs with the doctors at the hospital and I've got nothing to worry about.

But little sleep deprived me is catastrophising and judging myself 😂😂