Rachel Tuckey is a Mum to two boys.  This story is beautiful, honest and so brave.

“When our second son turned 6-months old we thought we would have been writing the obligatory half-year birthday Facebook post, we never imagined we would be performing CPR to save his life.

After the birth of our first son in 2017, my husband and I decided to book on to a first aid course with Mini First Aid. I have to admit, I have always been somewhat of a sceptic about these types of courses and was gutted to be potentially losing much needed sleeping time but we went nonetheless. The training was great and really insightful, and we “banked” the knowledge with the view that we may need to call on it for the inevitable bumps and bruises we were bound to experience, as he got older!

In September 2018, we had our second son who was five weeks early and has presented us with many challenges since being born - luckily all resolvable with age.

As he turned 6-months old he hit his worst and in the middle of the night I woke to him struggling to breathe. I picked him up out of his cot and whilst cradling him in my arms he completely stopped breathing. After trying to reposition him and getting no signs, I shouted to my husband to ring an ambulance. I tried hitting him on the back to dislodge any blockage in case he was choking on anything but; again, there were no signs of him breathing so I had no choice but to administer CPR. After 3-4 long minutes he let out a very weak cry and a few minutes later the ambulance arrived and the amazing crew took over.

In those moments my mind took me back to the course we had attended over 18 months earlier. I remembered the steps we went through when we practiced on the dolls. I heard our instructors voice singing “ah ah ah ah staying alive, staying alive”. It’s incredible what information you retain in your mind and how quickly you can recall it. It gave me the confidence to do what I needed to do in a moment when all I wanted to do was cry.

The following two weeks were spent in the hospital and, ultimately, our son had an operation to open up his airway. Today he is doing well and is such a happy boy with a smile that melts our hearts every single day. We are extremely lucky.

We don’t share our story to scaremonger or for any kind of recognition. We would truly hate for anyone to have to experience what we did that night. But on the off chance that someone may be in that situation, we would like to think that they know what to do and have the confidence to do it. Those two hours spent in 2017 saved our beautiful sons life in 2019; it could have been a very different outcome.

We want to thank Emily, our trainer and the Mini First Aid team from the bottom of our hearts. We are eternally grateful.“