This was more than a week ago and I haven’t written it –
He choked on a bagel chip bite that got caught in his throught, blocking his airway off a great deal and it was hard for him to breathe. We used rescue techniques to get it out of him, and saved him. It was very sobering for me, and for him very frightening. We used a mix of techniques – if you’ve got an infant or kid, learn them. Here’s a page detailing some rescue techniques for choking, and breathing and heart arrest. He’s I suppose small for his age (percentile – funny, he used to be large for his age), and while he’s more than a year old I think the techniques for infants worked better for him; it’s not just age to factor but size also. The back blows face down with the head lower I think are what worked best – but it’s probably different each situation. I struck between his shoulder blades a little lower. He was having a vomit reflex to get the thing moved up his throught which didn’t seem to do it, but the back blows brought it all up with vomit. Apparently you’re supposed to mix this with turning the infant face-up and using small thrusts at the mid-sternum if back blows alone don’t do it.
We’d have been wiser to call for an ambulance at the same time we tried to get him out of it ourselves. I think it’s very lucky we knew how to handle it just from what minimal memory we had of infant first aid.