How to Give Your Baby or Infant CPR

How to give your baby CPR is an important, potentially life-saving, procedure that every parent should learn. If you’re not a parent it’s a good idea to learn how to give a baby CPR since, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to administer CPR to a baby or an infant.

Ok, heaven forbid you find your baby or find yourself in a situation where another person’s baby needs cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or CPR. But first, what exactly does CPR do that is potentially life-saving? Important to know since knowing what exactly you’re trying to accomplish, without stating the obvious-saving the baby’s life-can help you better perform CPR.

Simply, the chest compressions simulate the heart’s pumping of the blood through the circulatory system. Whereas the exhaled air breathed into the recipient, in this case a baby or infant, helps circulate oxygenated blood through the blood circulatory system. Also, the air we breathe out isn’t entirely without oxygen. In fact, very little of the oxygen we breathe in is actually retained. Most of it is exhaled right back out. So knowing that, it’s not a stretch to see how a baby or infant benefits from the oxygenatedair we breathe into them during CPR.

Ok, now to the actual procedure one does to perform CPR on an infant or a baby follows. Too, the following is written with the idea that nothing else needs to be done beforehand, such as stopping a badly bleeding wound or a choke-relieving procedure.

First, check to make sure the baby or infant actually needs CPR. Very important since it would be easy to hurt the baby should you actually perform CPR on him or her if she didn’t need it in the first place. Of course, don’t second-guess yourself once you’ve determined that the baby really needs CPR. It almost goes without saying, time is of the utmost importance. Even before calling 911, if a baby needs CPR give it for a couple or few minutes then call for help. The baby will have a much better chance of surviving if CPR is given first, rather than a couple or few minutes later after making a call for help.

So, you’ve determined that CPR is needed because after several seconds you don’t see the baby’s chest and/or nostrils moving with your head close to his or her chest. You don’t hear any breathing and/or you don’t feel his or her breath on your face or cheek. With the baby on his or her back, much like you would were you administering CPR to an adult or even an animal, open his or her airway by tilting the head back. Use your other hand to gently pull the chin down so as to open the mouth. Now, for a full second breathe one short, light, but firm breath into the lungs. Let the air you breathed in come back out, and repeat another breathe one more time. Do so by covering, both, the mouth and nose of the baby while breathing the two separate breaths and watching at the same time to see the chest rise. If you don’t see his or her chest rise, either you blew too gently or something is obstructing the airway, and you will need to clear the obstruction before continuing.

Next, the chest compressions. Just below the left nipple of the baby, on the same side where the heart is located, press straight down in a smooth motion 1/2 to 1 inch with the pads (where your fingerprints are) of two or three of your fingers. Do thirty compressions at about close to two per second. After the thirty compressions, repeat two separate breaths. Continue doing so, that is, two breaths then thirty chest compressions, for about two minutes or about eight rounds of two breaths and thirty chest compressions before calling for help.

Learning how to give your baby CPR or another person’s baby CPR is a very important procedure to know. Just think about how you would feel afterwards if you found yourself in a situation where your baby or another’s baby needed CPR and you didn’t know how to give it. Print and copy this article, or copy down the important parts on how to give your baby CPR, and tape them up somewhere around the house. God-forbid you ever need to give your baby CPR. But should you need it, you’ll be glad learned how to do so, and that you taped the instructions up somewhere for a super-quick review in the event you need to give your baby, the potentially life-saving procedure, CPR.