Yesterday the story of a month-old baby who choked on the bottle was published, and was saved, they say, by the performance of two police officers who performed resuscitation maneuvers.
The reality is that choking with milk is relatively frequent and is usually solved without doing too much, but just in case it happened, we will explain today how to act if your baby chokes on milk, either while breastfeeding, or taking a bottle.
If he chokes a lot
If your baby happens frequently, you may not need this paragraph, because you have already told the pediatrician and perhaps he has already given you the solution. And is that if a baby chokes very often an assessment is usually made in case there is a disorder of swallowing, gastroesophageal reflux, etc.
It may also happen that it is more an external issue: that the milk in the bottle falls too quickly so that the baby can manage it effectively, or that the ejection reflex of the breast milk is so strong that the first "jets" go straight to the baby's throat, hard, causing choking.
In Babies and more A policeman saves the life of a choking girl, reminding us of the importance of knowing how to actIn the first case, it will be necessary to adjust the flow of milk output and even modify the way the baby is fed, making it more vertical (the Kassing method is a good option). In the second, it can help that the mother removes some milk before breastfeeding, so that when the child sucks it does not come out with such force.
If one day, suddenly, he chokes
Although the scare you get is great, because we talk about small babies, the good thing about choking on a liquid is that it is, a liquid, and hardly clog the airways in a very dangerous way.
Typically, when some liquid is going into the airway, the cough reflex is triggered to go, little by little, taking the milk out. But sometimes, before coughing, we can meet the increasingly altered child trying to catch air, and then the most logical thing is turn it upside down right away so that, by gravity, it is easier for the liquid to go outside (many times they choke when they regurgitate a little milk, if they are looking up and do not know how to manage the milk that goes up).
Beyond turning them upside down, nothing needs to be done if the baby is coughing, because that way he is already solving the choking episode.
Now, if little by little it stops coughing and instead of being better, it is worse, not only will we have to ask for help (someone call for emergencies), but we must assess what the child's state of consciousness is.
In Babies and more These are the foods that children drown more easilyIf you are aware
According to the latest resuscitation guides of European Resuscitation CouncilIf a child with an airway obstruction is conscious but does not cough, or if the cough is not effective, we should start hitting the back with the heel of our hand.
If despite the blows we see that the baby is not breathing (this is more common if it has choked on a solid object), we will go on to do chest compressions. In both cases, an attempt is made to increase the intrathoracic pressure of the baby to produce an artificial cough and help you move the object that clogs the airway.
If we still did not achieve our goal, we should continue with a sequence of five strokes in the back and five chest compressions, but we insist, it is very, very unlikely that we will reach this point because the most common thing is that as soon as we modify the posture in which it is, the liquid goes out to the outside, helped by the same cough of the baby.
What if we found it unconscious and out of breath?
Source: European Resuscitation Council There are people who leave the babies taking the bottle alone, because they have seen that they are very capable of managing it. The baby lies down, the bottle is supported in some strategic way, and he eats as he wants to eat the food.
This obviously it's very dangerous, because the risk of choking is evident, and if we are not there to act, when we arrive it may be too late.
Similarly, it is recommended that at least the first six months, the baby sleeps in the same room as the parents because, in case there is any incidence, they can act (I am thinking of a baby who regurgitates milk, for example, or vomits, and nobody is at his side to modify his posture and not drown with these fluids).
If, for whatever reason, we arrived and saw the unconscious baby, without breathing, we would not only have to try to clean our mouth to get as much milk as possible or look for a possible object with our eyes, but we would have to start doing what was know how cardiopulmonary resuscitation or basic life support.
To do this, you start with the calls rescue breaths: open the airway by throwing the head a little backwards while opening the mouth (front-chin maneuver) and giving 5 rescue vents, while observing that, in doing so, the baby's chest rises and falls (if he does not , we must ensure that we have opened the airway with the extension of the head.
After the 5 vents, they are done 15 chest compressions and from there cycles of 15 compressions with 2 vents. We continue this way until the emergency service relieves us, or until the baby begins to breathe and regains consciousness.
As you can see, I've gotten the worst, just in case. But I repeat, and not to scare you too much: most times it is enough to prevent choking episodes and, if they happen, act quickly trying to get the baby out with his own cough, in our arms, face down.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | These are the foods with which children drown more easily. A mother shares the amazing x-ray of her 5-year-old son after choking on a grape. How would you act if your son choked on a foreign body?
