Four times Cordelia Nolan's newborn son stopped breathing, and four times she brought him back while she waited for emergency workers to show up on her doorstep.
Nolan's cousin, Kieran Byrne, acted as a go-between between a 999 (this was Britain) operator and Cordelia while she repeated CPR again and again on her little boy, just ten weeks old and born two months premature.
Wow. Not the pithiest of statements, but this one stopped me cold.
I saw myself going through the motions in my head and bursting into tears. I know adrenaline kicks in when you're faced with adversity, and a mother's love for her child will always prevail, but I don't know if I'd have had the wherewithal to keep up the fight if my child continued to falter. What's remarkable about the 999 conversation (available in full thanks to the Daily Telegraph) is just how calm Nolan sounds, even as Byrne gets increasingly frustrated with the operator as she tries to collect information and dispatch emergency workers (give him credit, he was stressed and he was still respectful!).
Notably, Nolan had been offered training in CPR before her son Emrys was released from the hospital. Because he was born prematurely, it was a precautionary measure offered by the hospital - and one that proved not just necessary but life-saving. I've heard from moms of premies who have gone through a whole ration of training; one told me the hospital even contacted her local ambulance corps to offer THEM training on how to deal with her son's specialized needs in case of emergency.
It's a happy story all around, especially for baby Emrys, who is doing just fine. How do you think you would have handled this one?
Image: Daily Telegraph
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