Back in December Bart and I went to a special seminar organized by our stake to train us to be official SEPA VOAD (Southeastern Pennsylvania Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) volunteers. About one week later, we received badges that allow us special access to emergencies! In conjunction with this, SEPA VOAD through the Red Cross offered to give us more training classes.
So last night Bart and I became two of the newest people to be CPR certified. We spent 4 hours learning about rescue breathing, compressions, and saving people who are choking. We offered to do the mouth-to-mouth on each other, but they insisted that we use the Annie training dummies (see below). It was VERY informative and now we feel empowered to help in an emergency. I'm sure that we would still be terrified, but the extra knowledge will definitely help.
I have to admit, although I usually am anxious to try out new things, this time I hope I don't get a chance to practice any time soon.
Also, poor Heimlich got shorted. They taught us how to help a choking victim, but never once was the maneuver called "Heimlich."
They can't call it Heimlich anymore because if something goes wrong and the victim still dies, is injured, etc. then people could sue Heimlich. Seriously. I learned that in college. See, that degree is useful for something.
Regardless of what it's called it's good stuff to know. Claire tried to eat a popcorn kernel while my sister was babysitting and Robyn totally got to do the whole flip the baby over and pound on their back thing. It scared Robyn to death but she saved Claire from any catastrophe. So good job with the new skills. :)
I almost choked on a popcorn kernel when I was a baby too, except that I flipped myself over and pounded on my own back to save my life.
Juan is nothing if not one amazing baby.
And I think the cpr stuff is pretty darn sweet too.
That rubbery torso will now feel a lot safer having you guys around! Really though, it is a pretty important skill to have before you have kids because you can almost guarantee that they will choke on something someday. They wouldn't let me check Savannah out from the hospital after she was born until I showed them on the doll I could do baby resuscitation, so that saved me some time to already know it. She stopped breathing a few times and had to be be plugged into an alarm machine at night that would go off if she stopped breathing. Now that she's all grown up, she hasn't had any problems with popcorn kernels, even though that seems to run in the family from the sound of things.