Recently I was walking through Garema Place when I heard a commotion outside a cafe.

I stopped and a lady nearby said “there’s a child and he’s choking.”   I ran over to see if I could do anything to help.

There was a woman holding the child – he looked about three years old – and she was whacking him between the shoulder blades.  A man had his fingers inside the boy’s mouth, trying to reach something.  There were several other family members about and everyone was working frantically together to try and help.

In 1999, when my daughter was about a year old, she choked on a piece of fruit.  She had been wandering around in the kitchen and suddenly came running over to me, arms outstretched, looking very frightened.  It took me a moment to realise what was happening.  She coughed a couple of times but couldn’t clear it.  I didn’t know what to do.   Just as I started to get really anxious, she managed to cough again and out popped a piece of banana.  We both sat down on the floor and cried tears of shock and relief.  The next day, I enrolled in a First Aid Course.  I managed to find one that was tailored to parents and carers of children, and included a very useful lesson on choking.

Fourteen years later and finally that lesson came in handy.  Which is to say,  I vaguely remembered a few things.  The first is that you don’t whack them on the back while they’re upright.  The second is don’t stick your fingers down their throat, fishing around for whatever it is, whilst they’re trying to cough it up.  And the third thing is don’t try and do what they do in the movies – the ‘Heimlich Manoeuver’ – which involves picking the poor bugger up and squeezing the air out of their lungs.

Crushing their ribcage or whacking them between the shoulder blades might feel like the right thing to do, because you’re trying to help them dislodge the object, but it’s actually the worst.  You might dislodge it, but it may slip further down into the windpipe, causing a more serious blockage. And it is very difficult to keep coughing if suddenly all the air has been squeezed from your lungs.

In this situation you need to work with gravity, so get the person into a position so that their head is lower than their body.  If it’s an adult, have them bend over at the waist.  If it’s a child, sit down in a chair and have them lie them face-down across your lap with their head down towards the floor (as though you were about to give them an old-fashioned smack on the backside).  That way, if and when the object is dislodged, it will fall out of their mouth rather then further down their throat.

Once they’re in that position, you should let them try to dislodge it themselves by coughing it up, but if they are unable to do it you can administer five blows between the shoulder blades, checking after each one to see if the object is dislodged.  If you can see the object in their mouth, and you can reach it, it’s OK to try and get it out.  If it’s still stuck, call Triple-O.

I told the woman holding the little boy to turn him upside down, which she did. He seemed to stop choking but then he appeared to be having a seizure as he was biting down hard on his father’s fingers – perhaps he was having a seizure and that started the choking, I’m not sure.  He was conscious and breathing, but not lucid.  We lay him down in the recovery position as the ambulance arrived.  Then the mother said that he’d had a febrile convulsion just recently, so that’s possibly what was going on.

In Canberra you can get first-rate First Aid training through Australian Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance.  Both provide classes for parents and carers who are looking after small children and babies.  St John’s Ambulance offers regular non-accredited ‘Caring For Kids‘ (there is no assessment) whilst the Red Cross can come to your preschool or community centre on request and take a group through the Emergency First Aid for Parents and Carers course.

For information on first aid courses in Canberra, contact the Red Cross on 6234 7600 and St John’s Ambulance on 6282 2399.  In the meantime, here is a link to a number of very useful, up to date First Aid Fact Sheets on the St John’s Ambulance website.

The difference between my reaction to a choking child in 1999 and my reaction after the course – albeit fourteen years later – was stark.  I didn’t save that boy’s life or anything heroic but it was good to be able to do something to help his parents who, like me in 1999, were operating on sheer adrenalin when practical know-how and the confidence to administer it would have been so much more useful. Needless to say, I’ll be signing up for a refresher course, and might bring both my kids (now teenagers) along for the lesson.