Infant CPR
Infants can choke. That is because they put a lot of things into their mouth. If this happens, hold the infant in your arm face down and hit them in the back with the palm or your hand between the shoulder blades. The force should be upward thrusting to remove the object.
If they are not breathing, check for an obstruction in their mouth with your finger. Then, slightly tilt their head back. Don’t tilt it too far because infants heads are larger and their neck muscles are weaker than adults. Then put your mouth over their mouth and nose and breath two breaths. Don’t use all your air because you have to remember they have really small lungs. To get an idea, feel your cheeks up with air. That’s about how much they will need. Look at their chest while you are giving them air to make sure you see the chest cavity rise and fall. After the first breath, be sure to give the lungs a chance to empty before giving a second breath. It doesn’t take long.
To do CPR, the ration is 30 compression for every two breaths. Babies hearts go faster than adults. You will need to do around 80-100 compressions per minute. You find the baby nipples and go in the middle. That is where you do the compressions. You will use two or three fingers to do the compression. It is difficult to say how hard to compress. The babies chest should rise and fall. Too much pressure will kill the infant, and not enough and they will die anyway. In any case, it is better to try and save them. CPR will very often break ribs and cartilage. The idea is that this is a much better alternative than death. You need to compress hard enough that the heart is getting compressed.
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