Just that really,..the last 24. Hours feel surreal. Our almost two year old choked on some food last night. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, I remember looking over at him as he started to choke and even though he was still breathing at that point, I knew I needed to call 999. Within about minute of calling he had stopped breathing, he just went rigid and his jaw clenched and we were trying everything to help him dislodge the food but couldn’t. My husband did the heimleich manouvre, back slaps, I was trying to get into his mouth to try and get the food out but his jaw was just clamped shut so hard I had to prise it open but nothing worked. Then he just went floppy and the colour drained out of him, he went blue so quickly, all his limbs, his whole little body, and he just didn’t look like him at all. It was awful: We thought he was dead. I can still hear my husband shouting to the call handler that he was dying. We have since worked out he had no oxygen for probably about three minutes (although can’t be sure exactly, it felt like a lifetime) and somehow in that time the 999 handler managed to get us to do cpr (which I did) and I also pushed my fingers down his throat so far that whatever it was got pushed further in and all of a sudden he just began breathing again. Our poor elder son saw the whole thing, but by the time the paramedics arrived we had got him back round, 8 minutes in total from us calling to them arriving. We are sat in hospital now. He’s recovered thank god, but hes being monitored., just needed to get it out somewhere.
i thought I’d be better than I was in that scenario, i though if something happened I’d be able to be calm but I was a mess. We both were. I’m terrified it’s going to happen again. We came so close to losing him.
if anyone has any good ideas on how to process this going forward, or suggestions on how to not feel so blinded sided if it ever happens again please share.,I feel like we almost let him down by panicking and I can’t bear the thought of how it was very nearly a different ending.