What to do if your baby chokes on milk

What to do when a newborn chokes on milk

When you see your newborn choking on breast milk but may be coughing, letting him cough is the best way to clear his airway.

When there is no cough, the baby tries to inhale to no avail, and his face takes on a bluish tint. An adult needs to quickly turn the baby on his back and put him on his hand, lowering it on his knee. The butt should be higher than the head (as shown in the picture below). Slam your hand between your shoulder blades up to five times. This method is effective in most cases.

If the child still cannot breathe:

• Turn him over on his back
• Place on a hard surface
• Move his head to the side
• Press your fingers inward on the lower chest/upper abdomen.

These actions must be done carefully so as not to damage the internal organs. The technique is more suitable for removing solid foreign bodies.

If the outcome is successful, you should consult a doctor, since the child could have suffered as a result of the measures described above. If all actions are unsuccessful, artificial respiration should be performed.

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What to do if a child chokes

Signs:

sudden severe anxiety, sudden cough in a healthy child, and then as these symptoms increase - holding your breath, changing the color of the skin, decreased muscle tone (severe lethargy), loss of consciousness.

Stay calm, panic is a bad ally, and the baby’s health depends on the speed and correctness of first aid.
Principles of assistance:
1. Open your mouth and remove any visible object that is making breathing difficult. If it is not visible, only then proceed to point 2. Other family members should call an ambulance.

2. Place the baby on your left forearm, supporting the chest.
Let the baby's head hang below the body. 3. With your right palm, make 5-6 blows in the area between the shoulder blades. Pushing movements are carried out from bottom to top. 4. Then turn the baby over onto his back. 5. Determine the middle of the chest (the horizontal line is 1 cm below the line of the nipples, the vertical line passes through the navel. 6. With three fingers of your right hand, give 5 pushes at this point, pointing your hand upward. 7. Open the baby’s mouth and inspect him to see if the shot has come out inside an object? 8. If a child chokes on food, then the criterion for effectiveness will be normal breathing and absence of coughing. 9. If the result is not achieved, repeat the entire procedure again. If the child is older than one year:
1. Open the mouth and remove the visible object that is making breathing difficult. If he is not visible, only then do we proceed to step 2. Other family members should call an ambulance.

2. If the child is older than a year or is very large and is uncomfortable to hold in your hand, place him on your thigh on his stomach, with his head hanging down. 3. Use the heel of your palm to strike between the shoulder blades from bottom to top. 4. Quickly roll onto your back and rhythmically press your sternum five times. 5. Open the child’s mouth and examine it, remove the foreign body. 6. However, be careful - it is very easy to push it back, it is important to prevent this. 7. If you can’t restore your breathing, repeat the entire cycle from the very beginning.

What to do in serious cases

If an infant has choked on milk, lost consciousness and is breathing heavily, immediate action must be taken. Follow the instructions below:

• Kneel at right angles to the baby's chest
• Place one hand on his forehead and gently lower his head back. The head and neck should be on the same line. Avoid excessive bending of the neck
• Using your other hand, lift his chin with your finger.
• Carefully examine the newborn baby and remove any foreign bodies from the nose or mouth if any are present.
• Check his breathing (look closely, listen, bring your hand to the baby’s nose), but this should take you no more than 10 seconds, there is no time to waste
• If he is not breathing, begin artificial respiration and chest compressions.
• If someone else is near you, ask them to call an ambulance.

Apnea during feeding of a premature baby

There are many reasons for the occurrence of such apnea. Premature babies, as a rule, have an immature respiratory center, which means the mechanism that regulates breathing is imperfect. As for feeding reflexes, we are talking about swallowing, sucking, they are also not entirely active. Their activities are poorly coordinated.

In addition, in premature infants, the functioning of the muscle fibers of the soft palate, as well as nearby tissues, is impaired. They sag when feeding on their back and apnea is clearly visible. When feeding on the side, the baby suffers less from breathing problems, or there are no problems at all.

It is important!

Statistics show that babies born before 29 weeks may suffer from feeding apnea in 80% of cases, half of babies born at 30-31 weeks, and 10% born after 32 weeks.

The baby may choke on milk under strong pressure. If the baby is breastfed, you can first express a little milk, and if he is bottle-fed, reducing the hole in the nipple helps.

What should a mother do if her baby has an apnea attack? First, stop feeding and try to “stir up” the child. If breathing is not restored, then artificial respiration must be performed.

In serious cases, you need to switch to closed heart massage. For such small children, it is done using the thumbs, placing the remaining fingers on the child’s back. The pushes should be done frequently, after every 5 pushes you should do mouth-to-mouth breathing.

Remember that feeding apnea requires systematic medical prevention of attacks. To do this, oxygen is given to the premature baby before and after feeding. And, of course, if apnea occurs in infants, it is always worth consulting a doctor once again.

How to perform artificial respiration and chest compressions?

First, artificial respiration is performed, and then indirect cardiac massage.

Artificial respiration

The procedure for performing artificial respiration when a baby has choked on milk:

• Clear the child's airways with a handkerchief or clean cloth;
• Cover your baby's nose and mouth with your lips;
• Inhale air into his lungs, make sure that the baby's chest rises as he inhales (for a newborn, the air that an adult can get by simply inflating his cheeks is enough);
• When your baby's chest rises, stop inhaling and let it fall.

Repeat these steps 2 times.

Heart massage

Then perform a cardiac massage. The procedure is as follows:

• Make sure the newborn is on a firm surface.
• Place two fingers in the center of the baby's chest, exactly 1 finger width below the line between the nipples.
• Gently but quickly press down to a depth of approximately 4 centimeters, but no more. Do 30 presses (speed should be 100 presses per minute).

In total, you need to take 2 breaths, 30 presses, 2 breaths, 30 presses, and so on.

Breathe and massage for two minutes before asking for help (if no one else is available to do so). Continue resuscitation measures until signs of life appear or until medical personnel arrive.

Naturally, it is difficult to perform resuscitation actions without training. To gain the necessary experience and, if something happens, to clearly know what to do when a newborn chokes on milk, we recommend taking a first aid course.

Rules for providing assistance

By providing first aid to a child, you can also harm him even more. All actions should be carried out carefully, following the following recommendations:

1. Calculate the force of the blows. The clapping should not be too strong so as not to damage the internal organs of the baby.
2. Never knock on the back of a baby who is in an upright position. The foreign body will only move further along the respiratory tract.
3. If a baby chokes on a foreign object but coughs up, make sure that the cause of choking has been eliminated. The object must be spat out, otherwise consult a doctor.
4. During the assistance event, be sure to monitor the general condition of the child. Coughing and crying indicate that the baby can breathe.

When to call an ambulance?

If you cannot help the baby, he is suffocating, then immediately call an ambulance. Signs of suffocation are:

• Blue discoloration of the skin;
• Inability to breathe, whistling when inhaling or exhaling;
• Eyes wide open, child scared;
• The baby cannot cry or make any sounds;
• From lack of oxygen the baby loses consciousness.

Important! While waiting for the ambulance, do not stop carrying out the listed activities. If the child cannot breathe, give artificial respiration.

Prevention

Newborns have natural mechanisms to protect themselves from choking. Therefore, experts say that there are no special rules for preventing such cases, since situations where a baby chokes on milk are rather an exception to the rule. Some risks exist if the mother has large breasts and feeds her baby in a lying position. However, even in these cases, babies know what to do in order not to choke; they simply withdraw from the breast. If your child chokes frequently, his swallowing or sucking functions may be impaired, so you should consult a doctor.

Bottle feeding increases the risk of choking, experts say. This is due to the fact that the baby may not have time to swallow a strong stream of milk. Be careful when bottle feeding your baby. Do not leave it if the baby falls asleep - he may choke on liquid in his sleep.

Reasons and recommendations

For convenience, I decided to list for you all the possible reasons why a child chokes on milk and immediately give recommendations for eliminating these reasons.

The baby is distracted while feeding. You probably yourself sometimes choked when, during a meal, you were told some important information or played loud music. They quickly entered the room. The same thing can happen to a baby. If, besides the mother, there is someone else in the room and, on top of everything else, speaks loudly and tries to wink at the baby, then nothing good will come of it. Firstly, the baby will constantly pull away from the breast, and secondly, he may choke.

If you have had such cases, then during feeding you should retire to a separate room with your baby and not use any gadgets or other equipment until the baby has eaten. If there is no opportunity for privacy, then explain to relatives that there is no need to distract the child while he is eating.

The baby grabs the milk too quickly. This usually happens because he is hungry and is trying to eat quickly. In this case, in addition to the fact that the child is choking, he also catches air and then has belching, hiccups, and colic.

If this is your case, then perhaps you should reconsider the schedule on which you feed your baby or even start feeding on demand.

The baby has a stuffy nose. Perhaps it is difficult for him to breathe through his nose and he tries to do it with his mouth and eat at the same time. Naturally, he doesn’t do this well and he begins to choke and choke. The cause of this phenomenon can be either a cold or a physiological one. "Physiological runny nose in an infant."

In this case, before feeding, it is necessary to rinse the baby’s nose with a solution of sea water or any other product prescribed by your pediatrician. It is also necessary to draw out mucus from the nose using a special tube. If you have a physiological runny nose, it is not recommended to pull out the mucus yourself, but if the child cannot eat normally because of this, then you will have to do it.

The mother has too much milk and it is already flowing. The child simply does not have time to swallow everything and begins to choke.

In such cases, it can be recommended to express a little milk before feeding, and then just start feeding.

You can try feeding your baby with only one breast and expressing the other. In this way, you will ensure that the amount of milk secreted gradually decreases and the baby stops choking.

The mother has “weak nipples.” In this case, a normal amount of milk is released, but it is not retained in the breast, but simply flows. The baby does nothing to keep the milk flowing and choke because the flow does not stop.

In this case, you can slightly restrain the flow of milk with your hand by pressing on the breast. In principle, no one is stopping you from pouring milk into a bottle and trying to feed from it.

The baby sucks milk, but has not yet fully learned to swallow. This happens to very young children in the first month of life.

There is no need to do anything here, the child will adapt to the environment and will begin to swallow milk normally.

If you are not breastfeeding, but bottle-feeding , then try changing your nipple. This may be the reason why your baby cannot eat normally.

Uncomfortable or incorrectly chosen position for feeding.

Experiment, try feeding your baby at an angle of 45 degrees to the horizontal. You don't need it to lie vertically.

If you have tried everything I wrote in this article and have not been able to identify the reason why your baby is choking on milk during feeding, then consult a doctor. The problem may lie much deeper; there may be problems with the esophagus or other digestive organs. However, this happens extremely rarely.