A SUPER calm mum saved the life of her eight-week-old son after his tiny heart stopped and her work CPR training kicked in.
Hayley Gardyj’s brought her baby Brodie back to life after she remembered the training she had been taught a year before.
The 37-year-old believes he would have died without her help.
She was at the vets at the time and had to correct staff there who tried to help her and did CPR on him as if he was a dog.
Hayley is now campaigning to make learning baby CPR compulsory.
Brodie, who is now 14-weeks-old, had a collapsed lung and was in hospital for eight days after the traumatising ordeal.
The nursery worker said: “It was the most awful day in my life and it’s been haunting me ever since.
“I don’t go out often without my husband – he is my rock. He keeps me sane.
“I am concentrating on this petition to make CPR training for new parents mandatory because it means I am concentrating my efforts into something good.
“My anger, my stress, my worry, all concentrated into something good.”
Her petition to make CPR training mandatory for all new parents now has nearly 200 signatures on Change.org.
Hayley had opted into a training course the year before through her work.
She continued: “If I hadn’t known paediatric CPR he probably wouldn’t have made it.
“The ambulances came quickly but it wouldn’t have been enough to save him.
“It should be mandatory. When you go to a birthing centre and you have your baby it should be part of a service to learn CPR on babies.
“It’s better to have some knowledge than nothing at all and it’s so important.”
Brodie was born eight weeks premature at just three pounds eight
ounces.
Hayley, alongside husband Stacy, 47, daughter Gracie, 14 and son Finley, 12, took him home to Melksham, Wilts five weeks later when his 40 weeks gestation period was complete.
But on his first trip out of the house with his mum, his heart stopped.
Hayley was driving him away from the vets after picking up a prescription for the family’s dachshund when Brodie started crying.
Hayley said: “He was crying, almost a bellowing cry. Something I hadn’t heard before.
“I tried to console him but he wouldn’t – he just wouldn’t settle.
“All of a sudden he just stopped.
“I looked at him and he was gone. His head was back, he went all floppy. He was a blacky-blue colour.
“I knew he was gone.
“I ran into the vet and screamed that my baby wasn’t breathing.
“I remembered my training from a year before and this old man in a video telling me what to do.
“I did compressions for three minutes and then he came round.
“He took his first breath and I have never felt so much relief in my life.”
The vets, where she had raced her tot back to, put an animal oxygen mask over his face and sucked the blood from his mouth with a syringe in case he choked.
During the compressions they had tried to help her but she had to take back control as they were pumping on either side of his chest – as you would do a dog.
But the ambulance quickly arrived and raced him to Bath with an air ambulance following in case his lung collapsed again.
In the hospital his heart stopped twice more, but Brodie is now back on the road to recovery.
Hayley said: “In the hospital I said to the doctor ‘He’s going to die today, isn’t he.’
“He just looked at me with a sad face and said ‘I can’t tell you that today.’
“Brodie got discharged from paediatrics. He’s putting on weight lovely and eating well – he’s doing really well.
“He’s just fantastic. He is so good, bless him.”
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