How To Do The Heimlich Maneuver For Toddlers?
Breathing is an important activity for the life of any being on this earth. A person cannot survive beyond a few minutes if breathing stops. Sometimes people get choked as a result of blockage of wind pipe. If this choking is not rectified immediately it can result in an unwanted mishap. There are a various ways to provide relief to the choked person. One of the methods employed is called Heimlich Manoeuvre.
In case of choking of a grown up child or an adult it becomes easy to find the problem faced by him as he or she can explain the problem by actions and movement of hands. However the children cannot explain their problem.
If the child who faced this problem has started weeping or breathing it implies that he has overcome this problem and it is necessary that he should be made comfortable and made to rest to enable him to start normal breathing.
The choking may be caused as a result of entry of some foreign object in the wind pipe. The foreign object can be the food which a person is eating or some other thing which the person may be chewing. Choking with food or medicine pill is sometimes seen even in the case of adults. When this happen to an adult, as a natural reaction he starts coughing vigorously, which helps clear blockage.
However such chances are more often found in small children, they sometimes even get choked with milk. This is why mothers while feeding the child often stop to enable him to take burp. In case of children, say of age up to one year, Heimlich manoeuvre is performed. The procedure of it is as follows:
The baby is held head down with one hand holding the legs or the feet and the other giving support to the neck and the weight resting on your thigh. It is essential that the head should be supported in such a way that the neck remains straight and does not bend, in case of bent neck the blockage will further aggravate instead of moving outwards. While holding the child give a few blows at the back of the child between shoulder blades. This will in all probabilities clear the object and relieve choking. If this does not work rotate the child the other way and give blows on the chest below the breast bone. If the child starts breathing give some artificial breaths and let the child start breathing normally.
If still you are not successful make an emergency call to the medical team. Keep trying to dislodge the object till help arrives but do not use too much force as this may result in bigger injury to ribs or spinal system.