Jenny Hutchinson: One of my biggest failures which luckily hasn't happened is, if I go to Amber at her cot, and I find, I can't wake her. She is unconscious. What on earth do I do then?
Steve Furnell: Now again, the most important thing you've got to try and do is stay calm and it's so difficult in that situation. You must be very-very frightening, but you've got to try and stay calm to try and help Amber.
Children do sometimes go unconscious and we need to deal with that swiftly. The first thing you need to do is actually check for any form of danger. Make sure that it's actually safe around Amber for you to pick her up, because you don't know why she might not be waking.
If there is something like a plastic bag or something fallen over her face, make sure you remove that, because that can help from bruise straight away. Then pick Amber up and do try and wake her. Do shake the baby gently, but not too vigorously. Just support the head and just give him a shake and try and wake her up. What we don't want people to do is shake babies vigorously. And we have heard of instances of what is known as shaking baby syndrome.
Jenny Hutchinson: Yes, yes.
We don't want that. If I don't wake her up that probably unconscious. That's where you need to get help as soon as possible. So get straight to your phone and dial 999 for an ambulance. And once you are on the telephone, what we want to do is find out whether they are breathing or not.
Now if you can place baby on a hard surface, that's slightly better.
Jenny Hutchinson: Better than the cot.
Steve Furnell: Better than the cot. Somewhere where you can actually easily reach through. Sometimes what actually stops babies from being able to breathe is a blockage in their airway.
Jenny Hutchinson: Right.
Steve Furnell: Very similar to choking, but what it could be is it could be their tongue. Because when you go unconscious, you lose all your muscle tone. All your muscles go floppy. And one of the muscles is the tongue and that can just slide backwards and block the airway. So what we want to do is open that airway.
Now we do this by placing one finger under the chin and a hand on forehead. And just very slightly tilt the head back. We need to be very careful, not to tilt the head back too far. Because if I have a short neck that can actually stop from being able to breathe as well.
Jenny Hutchinson: No, I wouldn't have known that. I would have probably gone too far.
Steve Furnell: Yeah, an adult will do go as far back as possible. Especially in babies under the age of one, we don't want to extend the neck back too far. We can then check to see if they are breathing and we do this by looking, listening and feeling. We can look to see if chest is rising, we can listen with our ear and we can feel against the lobe of our ear. Place your head right next to the baby's head and look, listen and feel and we do this for about ten seconds.
Jenny Hutchinson: Right. So I tilt the head back, but not too much and I'd need to check that, she is breathing. So I listen with my ear. And look for sometime, ten seconds yes.
Steve Furnell: Ten seconds is sometimes be a long time.
Jenny Hutchinson: Yeah, when I am panicking.
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