One of the most common and crucial concerns amongst parenting newbies: what to do if your baby, toddler or young child is choking.
In New Zealand, suffocation is more common among children than car crashes when it comes to death via fatal injuries according to Starship. Around 92 children each year will either die or be hospitalised from unintentional suffocation. This is 10 in every 100,0000 children.
Nikki’s life-saving advice is that if you see your child choking on something that is causing complete obstruction, call 111 and begin chest thrusts and back blows.
“Five back blows, followed by five chest thrusts over and over until the obstruction is cleared, the ambulance arrives and takes over, or bub goes unconscious and needs CPR,” says the paramedic mum.
An easy way to avoid any future choking incidents is by ensuring your child can eat food safely. Pinch the food between your index finger and thumb to imitate the pressure needed by a toothless gum to chew.
If the food is flattened fairly easily, it is most likely safe to give to your younger kids. If it remains firm, the food needs to either be mashed, squished or cut up into smaller pieces in order to avoid the risk of choking and those dreaded midnight ambulance calls.
2. When performing CPR on a child, what is the compression to breath ratio?
The second most important question that Nikki claims is crucial when it comes to parenting is knowing the compression-to-breath ratio on an infant.
The answer to this is 30:2.
This means that when you are performing CPR on a child, you must perform 30 chest compressions followed by two rescue breaths.
The goal is to perform five sets of 30:2 in roughly two minutes.
If you’re only doing compressions, do about 100-120 compressions per minute.
3. When your child is having a febrile seizure, should you be worried?
For those who don’t know, a febrile seizure is a fit or convulsion that can be brought about by an unexpected change in your child’s body temperature - an occurrence that is often associated with a fever.
While febrile fits can be scary and even distressing to witness, they are not harmful to your child according to the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.
Even long seizures that last over an hour almost never cause harm.
“Children usually recover from febrile convulsions with no complications”, says Nikki. “However, there are some risks associated with developing epilepsy.”
4. When it comes allergenic foods, when should you introduce them to your child?
When we say ‘allergenic foods’, we’re referring to milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, wheat, tree nuts (like walnuts and cashews), fish, shellfish (like shrimp) and sesame.
While there are more food groups that could be added to the list, 90 per cent of allergic reactions are caused by these contenders.
“I recommend parents introduce the most allergenic foods by the age of 1,” says Nikki.
5. If your child has a head injury, how do you know when to rush them to the hospital?
Nikki’s final piece of advice for parents was regarding head injuries. If your child hurts their head and is throwing up, after how many vomits do you need to take your kid to the hospital?
The answer? Anything more than one.
“More than one vomit is a sign of a serious head injury,” Nikki said.
Therefore, if your child has suffered a head injury, has vomited two or more times and you are concerned, you should definitely be visiting A&E.
