So lucky - 'drowned' toddler is revived after 7 hours

[Hulababy]

Summary:

A toddler was revived more than seven hours after he was found face down in his family's pond.

The medical team worked for more than five hours to make his heart beat again and another two stabilising him.

Dr Makwana said the boy survived because the cold water, coupled with the chilly winter weather and his small size, caused his temperature to plummet suddenly. He said this sent him effectively into a deep freeze which had prevented significant brain injury.

But Joe's father said his two large ponds will not be filled in despite the near tragedy.

He added: "I don't see that it benefits anybody to be so scared of everything. Accidents happen."

Full story here

Wow how lucky is this family.

Think I would be filling in the ponds though. Accidents may happen - but I wouldn't want to risk it again. DH's grandad filled in his very shallow pond the moment he heard he was getting great grandchildren. He didn't even want the risk to be there.

Two year olds are most at risk, unsurprisingly!

I agree that I would not have had a pond that wasn't made secure when my children were young, the risks are very real and it doesn't take long to drown normally. I am very lucky.

Out of interest, what percentage of children drown compared to being hit by cars, poisoned in the home or garden or other household accidents?

oh soupie you are soooo morbid

are they sure he hasnt been brain-damaged, I mean they wouldnt actually def be able to tell yet

Bloody hell at yoiur story lemonice and

What you don't know is how big the ponds are - it does say that they are large ones. They might be mini lakes (if he's really wealthy!). You also don't know how much extra attention/what other safeguards they have put it.

My Mum and Dad live next to a loch. There are gates between the "main" garden and the land that goes down to the loch. While it is rare that ds is in the garden unsupervised, he does know how to open at least one of the gates - but knows he is not supposed to unless we are around.

So it IS conceivable that ds could get himself all the way down to the loch.

But it is obviously not realtic for them to "fill in" the loch. Nor do I want ds to miss out on time with his grandparents. What we ARE doing it teaching him the risks of the loch and to be careful when close to it - plus trying to teach him to swim!

We need to put risks into perspective - which is what I think the father was trying to do here.

Before you think we are totally irresponsible, there is also a pond in the "main" bit of the garden, which has a decorative grill over it to stop any child falling in to it. (There are a couple of young kids who also live in the house - a mig onld manor house that has been converted into a number of flats)

from DTI site

"Each year up to 11 children are killed as a result of drowning in the garden. Research shows that such incidents are more likely to happen in someone else?s garden. In fact 80% of pond drownings happen in gardens belonging to neighbours, relatives and friends. Drowning is the third largest cause of accidental death in the home in under-fives. Most deaths occur in July and August when children are home from school and playgroup. There were 90 fatal drowning incidents involving children aged five and under between 1992 and 1999. These related to the following water features:

? 62 related to garden ponds

? 18 related to swimming and paddling pools

? 10 related to other water containers.

Boys account for 78% of all drowning incidents in the UK. The most at risk are one and two year olds"

so, soupdragon - answer to question so far:

Drowning is the third largest cause of accidental death in the home in under-fives. Don't know top two yet.

I find it horrifying that the boys father is refusing to fill the pond in. I agree with every sentiment in Aloha's first post.

I wasn't being morbid, I was curious where ponds/drowning fitted into the risks that children are exposed to at home. Thanks HB.

Can't find top two yet but think (from reading site) poisioning from household chemicals may be up there.

Talking of morbid, I'll take the discussion downhill by mentioning that in fact they did know about the thermal shock thing by the time you had your incident Lemonice. I remember reading something about the Nazi's having done horrific experiments along these lines on concentration camp inmates and the subsequent discussion (I think in the sixties) around whether it was considered acceptable to use the findings, considering they had been got by such abhorrent methods.

According to Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents tables - which I can't copy and paste, the leading accidental causes of deaths for under ones are drowing/choking/suffocation (which they put as one category for some reason) - 25 deaths, in road accidents (including as pedestrians) 7, fire: 4
for age 1 - 4
Drowing/choking suffocating 41 deaths
fire: 15
falls: 6

Garden ponds are the most common cause of drowing in young children.

I think chooking might be one of them, HB.

I also fell face down in the pond in our garden when a baby. My mum saw me floating in there, jumped in, hauled me out and then ran into the house with me screaming "she's dead, she's dead".
My dad's reaction - "don't be so stupid woman she's screaming her head off".
They didn't fill in the pond as the house was rented but we did move soon afterwards (not realted I don't think).
We were brought up on farms in our early years and most of our games were fraught with danger - it's a wonder either me or my brother survived.

Reading this thread has made me a bit concerned. My parents garden has a couple of big ponds (wouldn't be practical to fill them in or grill over the top) and I've never really worried about them but I will now be extra vigilant in the garden, especially with new baby who is to be a boy.

My thinking is that while you can't get rid of roads or cars, you can get rid of or cover over a pond.

I didn't know that Meanbean. My incident was in Jan 1962 so probably not common knowledge ?

When i look back at all the dangerous things i was able (not necessarily allowed) to do I am amazed I am still here. Another adventure activity we did in the same house was going into the eaves and lighting our way through with matches. And used to climb on to the roof from our playroom.

Also used to play on the main line railway and the construction site for the M4.

I think parents are much more conscientious these days or perhaps mine were particularly of the out of sight out of mind variety.

At the risk of being contentious, I think it's that parents are more paranoid these days rather than "more conscientous". I am sure our parents would have said that they WERE conscientious.

But then, I AM reading Paranoid Parenting at the moment - bought for me by my parents!

Janz, what do you think of the book PP?

I tend to be fairly laidback with the kids, and prepared to take some risks; but I would never have a garden with a pond with toddlers. Large, uncovered waterbutts are also a big danger. Young children who like to climb, can clamber up, topple in and there's no way they can get out.

My boys can both swim (they are 5 and 7), ds1 is a very strong swimmer, but they could both easily stumble, trip, bang their head and drown in a pond. Also they play out a lot with friends, and I wouldn't feel relaxed having children, especially younger ones, in my garden with minimal supervision if we had a pond.

Well just reading on mumsnet suggests that parents certainly have a wide spectrum of worries. In fact there seem to be a whole host which I didn't know about when my children were growing up and ds is only just 16. There seems to have been an explosion of fears and anxieties in the last few years.

I think I certainly had a much higher risk tolerance with my children than most mns do.

Roisin - I'm enjoying it, but I'm only half way through Chapter 2. It only reinforces what I tihnk already - that we have become overly fearful of the rsiks that face our children, to the extent that we are now potentially at risk onf DAMAGING them by being over-protective. What I am finding interesting in the book are his theoreis as to why this has come to pass. Why is it that we are now more fearful? The world is NOT a more dangerous place than it was 30+ years ago when I was a kid. It's just our perception of the dangers that have changed.

I was going to start a thread on this - but was going to wait until I had finished the book.

I agree it's much more difficult now. I once ran away from home when I was about 6 or 7, I trashed my room and went off up the country lane at the side of our house and hid in a haystack for about 4 hours

When I came home nobody had even noticed I had gone + I had to tidy my room to add insult to injury! We would spend all day out on our bikes fishing from a very young age, I can remember my brother and I getting up in the dark in the summer holidays and bringing home trout for breakfast when we were only about 5 and 8!

I agree with over protective causes damage theory.

Sounds idyllic CD - like Famous 5 or My Naughty Little Sister!

ROFL at your story of running away and not being missed though!

Hasn't there been some research that shows an increase in Road accidents for 15-16 year olds, becasue they are "suddenly" allowed to go out on thier own, and have never been given the opportunity to learn to judge traffic for themselves?

I was walking to school on my own from Primary 1 (admittedly not far) - but we moved in Primary 4 to about a mile or a mile and a half away and I still walked - and I can remember having a key to the house, as sometimes I would get home before Mum (who had started at Uni).

I was walking to the station (mile and a half), getting a train into Glasgow and walking about half a mile (up a dark lane) to my ballet class from about age 8 or 9. I can remember Mum "training" me - following me with ds (2 years younger than me) until she was sure I know what to do/where to go. In winter, it would be dark too. (Class must have been at 5, as it was after school)

In NZ all swimming pools have to be fenced and ponds except if they are on farms in the middle of a paddock somewhere.