First, I think it's really important
to go just through the three basics.
Airway, breathing, and circulation.
If you can remember your ABCs,
you can remember these three.
And we'll start with airway.
Airway stands for, can they get air
into their lungs?
Is there a blockage, either in their mouth,
their throat, or their nose?
If they have a blockage in their airway
or their throat, we would need to do some form
of removal of the object,
and that can be done through back blows
and chest thrusts, as we can show you
in an actual performance video.
If it's not really in the airway,
it might be just a light obstruction of mucus
or some type of burp-up,
or maybe even some congestion in their nose
or in the back of the throat,
and there's a really easy way to clear that out,
and we call that a bulb syringe.
It's my best friend when we have new babies,
and there's two different types.
One has a long stem and one has a really short,
kind of a more roundish oblong shape.
I actually preferred the one with the oblong shape
because I was always afraid I was going up too high
with the one that was skinnier and longer.
You can pick those up at most grocery stores,
drug stores, or baby stores.
But, when you use that bulb syringe,
there's a couple tricks that I'd like
to share with you.
And this is very common.
You'll have this for a long time
and it's not usually an emergency,
but it's a great tip for clearing out just
that hard-to-deal-with congestion.
You wanna squeeze the bulb syringe first,
and then put the little end up into the nare
of the baby's nose.
Now, one thing that people forget to do is
block the other side,
and so a lot of times, when I would do that
and I'd let go of the bulb syringe,
the air would just go up one side
and out the other, and I couldn't get anything out
of their nose.
So, one trick that I found was,
once you squeeze the bulb
and put it up to the nostril,
push on the other side, and then let go of that bulb.
And you might have to do it several times,
but you can start to create some suction
and actually pull a lot of congestion out
of their nose, especially if they're dealing
with a little cold, or maybe just a little sinus,
but getting that out really,
really helps them be able to eat better
because now they're not suffocating,
it's not really suffocating,
but they're having some problem breathing
when they're breastfeeding
or when they're drinking a bottle.
And so, a lot of times, it'll interrupt their ability
to eat well, which is what they need,
because they can't breathe through their nose.
So, cleaning that congestion out
of their nose, though not life-threatening,
is a great tip to help.
The second is a more serious issue,
and that's breathing problems.
Breathing problems means they
can't really exchange oxygen well.
Some of the things to look for
is really labored breathing.
Fast, and babies breathe fast anyways,
but breathing hard,
using retractory-type muscle, accessory muscles,
making the ribs look like
they're really working hard and retracting,
so take the little onesie down
and look at their lungs.
If you see those accessory muscles pulling in,
if you see the little sternum sinking in,
see the abdomen and the whole abdominal muscle region,
that diaphragm really working to try
to pull air in, most likely,
there is an obstruction of some sort
in their lungs, whether that be an infection,
whether that be maybe something
that has gotten into their lungs.
But, either way, we need to get this baby
into emergency as soon as possible.
If that baby's working hard to breathe
and they're really laboring,
and they don't look like they're able
to actually recover, maybe they've even got
some circumoral cyanosis,
that's a blue color around the lips,
around the mouth and in the fingernail beds,
that is a respiratory emergency
and we're gonna call 911 right away,
no matter what.
And even if you called them
and it was not an emergency,
it's better to rule it out
than to error and have had to really actually call 911,
but didn't do it in time.
See, the thing that we need to realize is,
babies, unless they have a congenital heart defect,
they only really go into cardiac arrest,
for the most part,
because of respiratory problems.
So, if we control their breathing
and their airway, in most cases,
they won't go into cardiac arrest.
But, because they're so small,
and they need oxygen and they need
to exchange that carbon dioxide,
and they can really, really run to problems fast,
boy, if we don't take care of the airway
and the breathing, then we will end up
with a child in cardiac arrest.
If that happens, we need to begin CPR right away,
activate 911, and keep doing CPR,
and we've got a video that we're
gonna make sure you're able to watch
that teaches you exactly how to do that.
But, one of the things you need
to remember is to not fear
that you're going to make their condition worse.
If that baby is unconscious, not breathing,
not moving, and they're turning blue,
they need CPR.
CPR is not gonna make their condition worse,
even if they have a pulse,
but you couldn't feel it.
So, do the CPR as taught in the video,
after calling 911, and you will give
that baby the most, most, most awesome chance
at surviving this episode.
And if they don't survive,
it will not be because you failed.
In fact, just the opposite.
If there was a chance of survival to be had,
you gave them that chance,
so be confident in that.
You can't kill a person with CPR,
but CPR can give them a second chance at life.
I know that's a heavy topic,
but it's really important.