Scary

We had our first choking experience today. While at Shoppers Drug Mart, Maddie started coughing, spluttering and gagging. I instinctively knew she had something in her throat (don't worry - she was breathing fine - when I say choking I mean having something caught in her esophagus, not her airway).

I grabbed her out of the cart, turned her over my knee and started patting her on her back. This of course attracted the attention of the pharmacist, who nicely came over to try and help. He too could see that she was gagging on something, but we couldn't figure out what. He suggested we try giving her some water - which she took fine - so we concluded that if anything had been there, it wasn't anymore.

We proceeded to check out and as I'm pushing the stroller out to my car, she starts gagging and foaming at the mouth. Saliva and bile I guess is what was coming out. I pulled her out of the car seat again, she vomited all over me and I pulled a piece of cellophane out of her mouth.

I had put a few items in her stroller while I was shopping, but none of them had a missing piece of cellophane on them, so I'm not entirely certain where she could have gotten this small piece from. Regardless, I've learned my lesson. Not only do I have to watch her even more carefully to see what she's putting into her mouth (because she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth nowadays), but I also can no longer throw the odd thing in her stroller while I'm shopping - it all will go in a separate cart or in the basket below.

This experience also made me realize that I'm going to signing up for the first available baby CPR/first aid course that I can find. I know I did everything right in the circumstance, but I hated the panicked-not-sure-what-to-do feeling. And for those of you that know me, you know my phobia about choking ... yeah - I'd prefer not to go through that ever again.

xxoo.S