The one thing I love just as much as being a husband is being a father. Watching my daughter grow up is definitely something I will never pass up. BUT this goofy, little, 19 month old girl gave me and her mother the fright of our lives recently, which made both of us happy that we took a CPR class months before our daughter was born.
This past weekend, we had picked our daughter up after she spent the night at her grandmother’s, or “BaeMa” as she is called. This comes after my wife and I had a quick day date at the shooting range for some good ole range therapy (just felt right after we watch America act soooo… trailer trash). Excited to see our little bundle of joy, we got her into the car and was headed home.
Being close to 6 o’clock we was right on time to give her her bath and eat dinner. My wife took her upstairs washed her down all while I got her and our dinner ready downstairs. Once finished, my wife brought her back down and was prepared to eat, but like any other day when we get our daughter from her grandma’s she’s excited to be home so we let her run around and get some energy out for a second. After seeing that we was eating, our daughter who definitely knows how to ask for what she wants already, started telling us “eat eat!” We politely picked her up and put her in her high chair where she had a good plate of a Spanish rice, beans and queso mix that she has been devouring, with a few animal crackers and water. After finishing dinner, our daughter was still energized, but we could tell that she was getting to her sleepy delusional self as time continued.
Playing with her for a little bit and watching the Baby First channel, we was on the way to start shutting things down, until our daughter saw we had a bag of these stick pretzels that she has come to love as a snack. “Snack snack.” she asked. We gave here one of the pretzel sticks as she excitedly started doing her “food dance” while walking around with it.
One thing about our daughter, she has reached the age where she is definitely getting to know herself and you can see her personality become more vibrant. ALSO as many toddlers as we came to find out, she has come intrigued by making herself gag. Even though when she does it, we get on to her…, she thinks its funny (I know she gets this part of her personality from me. Us Geminis can think anything is funny.) Well today, she pushed it to the limit.
At first with eating her pretzel, she was taking small bits of it and would walk back and forth from her mommy and me. Everything is fine and dandy until she says, “Pretzel?” asking for another pretzel. Looking at her, she still has almost a whole of pretzel still in her hand. Telling her, “boo boo, you still have a pretzel you didn’t finish.” At this very moment I’m not sure what she thought, or she figured if she eats that pretzel faster she will be able to get another pretzel, but this little girl decides to snap the pretzel in half and tries to swallow it.
Once I saw that she didn’t bit it, I quickly yelled, “AHT AHT!” Like that does anything, but sometimes that is the fastest thing our parent brains can think of. LOL! “What Are Doing, Jayla!” At that very moment I see her hand come out of her mouth and that pretzel is not in her hand. I jumped up so fast as my daughter begin to gag with no sound. Patting her on her back at first, her mom then ran over right behind me. At that moment it literally hit me, “My daughter is chocking!” Trying to keep my emotions together, I knew I had to stay calm at that very moment. As my daughter begin to realize the seriousness of the situation, I watched her other hand come weak and she ended up dropping the other half on the ground.
At that very moment, my mind started to think about the CPR class we took. I remembered when it comes to infants, or small toddlers you don’t do the heimlich maneuver on them like you would do an adult. For a toddler mattering on the size, you either put them on your knee and pat their back, or if able. You lay them over your forearm vertically and pat their back with some force. At that very moment, I take my daughter as my wife is also patting her back, I take a knee, lean her over my forearm and we both give her a couple forceful pats on her back. At that very moment, we see the pretzel shoot out as well as with the dinner she just ate.
At that moment, I look at my daughter and begin to check on her make sure she’s ok. With a face of shock as she caught her breath, I begin to tell her how serious this was. Afterwards my wife ended up picking her up and just making sure she was still clean and relaxed with her on couch. Me on the other hand, I think randomly walked around the kitchen after cleaning the floor for like 10 mins trying to calm down the adrenaline that was pumping in my heart. Only thing I could do at that very moment was just thank God that my wife and I was prepared to make sure our daughter was ok.
As I’m over here pacing, I see my daughter’s face pop up from behind the couch an says, “Pick-a-boo!” The only thing I could do was just slightly smile and chuckle. I walked over to her as she is using her mommy as a stepping stool and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Good Job, Dad” my wife tells me while giving me a high five. “You too, Mama” I reply back to her. “Jayla over her trying give us high pressure all while she still trying to play!” My wife says. We just started laughing and talk about how happy we were that we took a CPR class.
I suggest any adult, but definitely parents to take a CPR class. My wife and I took one that was about 4 hours and taught us how to apply CPR to adults, but also infants and toddlers. If you are interested and looking for a class in your area checkout the red cross website.
When you’re a parent, you always think about having to protect your kids. Most times we think it will be from other people. Nope! we just found out we got to protect our daughter from herself as well. Which we are definitely prepared to do. You stuck with us FOREVER JAYLA! LOL!
