Coleen Nolan has recalled the terrifying moment her son Shane could have choked to death.
The Loose Women presenter said she’s still traumatised to this day by witnessing her child struggling to breathe after a biscuit became lodged in his throat.
Recalling the incident on Tuesday’s show, she said: “When Shane Jnr was nine or ten months I was introducing solids and gave him a little baby biscuit. He choked and it was probably only a matter of seconds but it felt like hours.
“I was on my own and it was my first child.”
The 53-year-old said she didn’t know what to do to help him and ended up shaking him upside down which dislodged the biscuit.
Now Shane is a grown-up singer who, of course, doesn’t remember the incident and has suffered no ill-effects from it, but Coleen said the same can’t be said for her.
“From that moment and to this day, I still have a terrible phobia of children choking. It carries on now with my granddaughter, I can’t bear to look at her eating,” she said.
She said it also affected how she treated Shane and her future children as babies and toddlers. She had Shane and Jake with first husband, actor Shane Richie, and daughter Ciara with her second husband Ray Fensome.
“I became scared to give him anything, everything had to be pureed,” she said.
As a result of her reluctance to give them solid foods at a young age, she said they became fussy eaters.
Her fellow Loose Women panelist Nadia Sawalha said it sounded like Coleen suffered from a form of Post Traumatic Stress following the incident.
“If you thought your baby could die it doesn’t surprise me,” she said.
Coleen raised the matter on today’s show as she said she is far from alone in how she feels. She said she knows of many other parents who fear their children will choke – and don’t know what to do should such an emergency occur.
Dr Hilary Jones appeared on the ITV show to share his advice and demonstrate what to do.
He said if a child under 12 months is choking, you should encourage them to cough and if that doesn’t help, place them face down on your lap and hit their back hard five times between their shoulder blades.
You should call for help as soon as possible.
In the case of an older child, the back thrusts can be done while they are leaning forward in front of you and if that doesn’t work, use the heimlich manoeuvre of abdominal thrusts.
He said: “It is terrifying when you see it happen. Luckily the cough reflex is very strong in children but their airway is only 4mm so it is easy for food to obstruct the airway if it goes down the wrong way.”
However, he said despite the thousands of hospital admissions for children choking, few die as early intervention is life-saving.
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He advises parents to go on a First Aid course to learn the techniques he described and not to be afraid to use force when striking a child’s back to dislodge an item.
He also recommended preventing it happening by ensuring children being weaned are given foods that are soft and always sat down to eat.
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