Sleep

"Baby not breathing"

Perhaps one of the worst things you could hear over the airwaves. We drove, infact at times we flew. It's easy to see how red mist can blind some drivers. In our driving manual is a paragraph: "Red mist is the term that describes the state of mind if the driver of an emergency vehicle who is determined to get to the incident in the shortest possible time with total disregard to other road users"

It still took us ten minutes to get there, and it felt like hours. The update told us that CPR was in progress. The front door was open and I could hear screaming, I ran straight in and took in the scene, dad was doing CPR, mum was screaming. I grabbed the child and dad and ran back to the truck doing mouth to mouth on the child. The only thing that the child needed was a paediatric team at the hospital, we flew back while I carried on working with dad in the background begging me to save his child. The taste of partially digested breast milk stayed with me for a long time.

The story behind this 15 week old was tragic, mum had a cold and the baby was snuffly, dad stayed downstairs with the little one whilst mum got some rest. Dad got tired and fell asleep on the sofa, unintentionally rolling over and smothered it.

If you do ever read this, please please please don't ever fall asleep with your baby, in bed, on a sofa or anywhere where this could happen. It happens to every day folk in every day places, not just on the tv.