A little boy possibly saved the life of his father and little brother in Nebraska on Sunday. Tustin Mains, a 6 year old boy, was riding in the back seat of his father’s Chevy Avalanche, next to his three year old brother, when he saw his dad “fall asleep” at the wheel. The sharp thinking Kindergartner quickly got out of his seat, crawled up to the front and climbed into his dad’s lap, where he was able to see out the windshield and reach the steering wheel.

His dad, Phillip Mains, had not actually fallen asleep, but was unconscious due to low blood sugar. Thankfully, Phillip’s foot had slipped from the accelerator, but the truck continued to roll while idling at about 15 miles per hour, witnesses say. When he slumped over on the way home from a restaurant, his older son managed to handle the vehicle for several blocks before being rescued.

Passersby recognized that something was wrong, and alerted the police. Several other cars drove behind and in front of Tustin with their emergency flashers on until being rescued by North Platte police officer Roger Freeze. Freeze made contact with Tustin, parked his patrol car and chased the truck on foot. After about a block, he caught up with it. With the doors locked, he was unable to enter the vehicle. But before losing consciousness, Phillip had rolled down the window. Although the boy was startled when Freeze appeared, Freeze managed to reach in and put the car in park, bringing the Avalanche to a stop.

When Tustin was driving, he was able to maneuver through town, and even turned around when he didn’t recognize his surroundings. Amazingly, all three passengers, the officer, and the vehicle are all unharmed. But Tustin admits he was pretty scared by the whole ordeal. Police Chief Martin Gutschenritter praised the boy, saying, “That is also a very special young man. He was able to take quick action when his dad was incapacitated, and we are very proud of him, too.”

Chief Gutschenritter said the department will officially recognize the valiant effort that Officer Freeze made. “Investigator Freeze’s quick action possibly averted tragedy. I will be issuing him a departmental citation for his quick, professional action on this case. Phillip Mains also heaped praise on the officer. “To chase down a moving vehicle and get it stopped the way he did took a lot of nerve and it weren’t for him, things could have turned out much worse.”

As a mom, I would be so proud to call Tustin my own. I have some pretty terrific kids, but I don’t know how they would react in such a frightening situation. I can’t say I would offer my son driving lessons. But this story does remind me how important it is to teach my kids how to think and react in an emergency. It also reinforces my concern that my son know where we live–to be able to get himself home if something happened. I also need to remember to thank my friend who is a police officer–and teach my kids to respect the police. They really put themselves on the line for us all every day.

When you are pregnant, bleeding or spotting can cause a lot of worry and wonder.  Such experiences are supposedly common: about 1/4 of all pregnant women will experience bleeding or spotting during her pregnancy according to statistics.

How do you know that your bleeding is just “simply bleeding” and not a sign of miscarriage?  There are some clues that may help.  It should be noted that any time you are pregnant and are concerned, you should call your doctor.  If you are experiencing bleeding, please call you doctor for more advice and information immediately unless your doctor has otherwise directed you.

That having been said, you may wonder what it all means.  How DO you tell the difference between something scary and something mostly harmless? You may also wondering what will happen next. I have bled or spotted with almost all of my pregnancies.  I’ve lost some of those pregnancies.  This is what I’ve learned.

There is a difference between “old” and “new” blood.  This is one thing the doctors always asked me.  What is the color of the blood?  Red means new; brown spotting means old blood and doesn’t seem to be a “big deal”.

Another thing that doctors always asked me was how much bleeding there was.  That’s hard to gauge actually.  A good way to have something definitive to tell the doctor is to put on a pantyliner.  You can say that you haven’t soiled the liner and it’s been on about so many hours or you can say that you’ve been soiling through a pad every so many minutes.

Another thing that was very important to the doctors was if I was experiencing pain.  During my miscarriages, not only was I bleeding quite a bit, but I was also experiencing a significant amount of pain.  For one miscarriage, I felt the pain in my stomach. It felt like really bad cramps.  For the other miscarriage, I felt the pain in my back.

I found that one of the first questions that doctors ask about when you are bleeding is if you’ve had sex recently.  For some women, this can cause irritation, which can cause bleeding.  They will also ask you if you have reason to believe that you have an infection, which can also cause bleeding.  Fibroid tumors can also cause bleeding during pregnancy.

Some of my bleeding episodes have landed me in the ER.  For my last child, my fibroids were causing a lot of bleeding.  Even though the blood was brown, I was soiling through pads.  My doctor advised me to go to the ER for an ultrasound.  At the ER, they determined that our child was fine.

I know how scary bleeding can be during pregnancy.  Hopefully, you’ll never experience any bleeding!  Please note that above ALL else, you need to contact your doctor!

My 12-week old daughter absolutely hates having her feet exposed. Even in the hospital, if one little foot worked itself free of the swaddling, she would cry and cry. She spent the first eight weeks of her life clad in blanket sleepers so I wouldn’t have to worry about an exposed foot waking her in the middle of the night.

When I started dressing her in little pants and onesies, I always took care to inspect the inside of her socks for stray strings that could wrap around one of her little toes. But I never thought to check the inside of her footie pajamas.

Today while I was writing a blog post my husband was watching the baby. I ran into our room when I heard him call out, “Come here, I need your help.” His voice was calm but urgent; I knew it was an emergency of some kind.
We have a changing table in our bedroom so I expected to walk into a poop-filled disaster. Instead, I saw my husband with the baby scissors out, doing something with our daughter’s wriggling foot.

“She has a string wrapped around her toe,” he said.

I calmed my daughter with kisses and stroking and simultaneously held the other foot down while he tried to extricate the nylon string that had wrapped itself tightly, in several layers, around our daughter’s middle toe, which was quite red. It was scary but I remained calm… of course, he didn’t want to pull the string and wind up cutting her, but we had to make sure every bit of string was removed.

When it was finally done, I massaged her toe and foot to get the blood flowing, and made sure she could still wiggle that toe. She seemed none the worse for the wear, and stopped crying as soon as we had finished.

Before dressing her again, I turned the pajamas inside out to remove every small string I could find. From now on, I will check every piece of clothing before I put it on her for any bit of string or thread. Even threads that are shorter than half-an-inch, too small to get wrapped around a finger or toe, should be cut. Any small thread can suddenly pull and turn into a giant, dangerous string.

This is also a good time to remind parents that baby’s clothes should not have strings or bows that hang down, and it’s a good idea to keep strings off your own clothes, as well. I’ve pulled all the strings out of my hoodies and I tuck the strings on my sweatpants and pajamas into my pants.

Am I a bit paranoid about this? Probably. But a friend of mine has a son who lost his finger when it got wrapped around the string of a window shade. And I remember when my nephew was only 2 years old, we had to pull over on the side of a major parkway to extricate his finger, which had gotten trapped by the stringy hair of his favorite Rugrats doll.

Our “string adventure” this morning was enough of a close call for me that I will be even more vigilant in the future. I know I can’t protect my daughter from every danger in this world, but I will do everything I can.

The latest CDC report says that the majority of children and adolescent accidental injuries in the US are due to vehicular accidents, drowning, and falls. From 2001 to 2006, approximately 55 million children were treated at emergency facilities for so-called “unintentional injuries”, leading to a yearly estimate of 9 million cases. Many accidents were non-fatal. However, a large number of accidents also resulted in deaths.

Other information given in the CDC report are:

• The highest death rates in children of all ages were among occupants of cars and other forms of motor vehicles;
• Drowning was the leading cause of death due to unintentional injury for children aged one to four years old;
• For older children aged 5 to 19 years old, fatal injuries were due to being an occupant in a motor vehicle crash;
• Poisoning and falls accounted for the highest rates of non-fatal injuries to young children aged one to four years old.

This indicates that the risks for different types of injuries are age-related and that parents and caregivers should therefore take precautionary measures according the minor’s age.

The full report, “CDC Childhood Injury Report: Patterns of Unintentional Injuries among 0-19 Year Olds in the United States, 2000-2006,” is available at www.cdc.gov/safechild/Child_Injury_Data.htm.

For preventive measures recommended by the CDC, check out www.cdc.gov/safechild.

In case of an emergency, would you know how perform a CPR? Or use an AED?

CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. AED is the abbreviation for automated external defibrillator. And this week is National CPR/AED Awareness Week.

But why are CPR and AED important?

A CDC report estimates that 47% of cardiac deaths happen before the arrival of emergency services or arrival at the hospital. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), cardiac events can be fatal if CPR or AED is not applied with minutes of collapse. CPR alone can double or even triple a person’s survival chances in such situations. However, less than one-third of the victims receive CPR from bystander.

As part of this week’s CPR/AED Awareness program, AHA conducted an online survey of life-saving skills of the general public and the results are sobering.

Of 1,132 people who participated in the survey, 89% were willing to help in an emergency situation. However, only 21% of those asked felt confident enough to be able to perform a CPR and only 15%felt they could use an AED.

AHA is now stepping up on its campaign to convince people that CPR and AED can basically be done by anybody – not only those who have had medical training.

Most of us are familiar with CPR as we’ve seen in films and movies. We know that ordinary people like you and me, with practice, can do it. To make CPR even easier, AHA gives this tip: “The most effective rate for chest compressions is 100 compressions per minute – the same rhythm as the beat of the BeeGee’s song, “Stayin’ Alive.” Other tips can be found in this site.

But using an AED is another thing. Giving electric shock with a defibrillator is a pretty daunting task. Actually, AEDs are portable easy-to-use defibrillators which can be found in places where they might be needed in an emergency – schools, churches, and sports competitions. In the city of Zurich where we are now residing, they started a pilot project of placing AEDs in several public phone booths all over the city.

AEDs have been designed so they can be used by almost anybody even without previous medical training. According to AHA, AEDs are equipped with clear audio and visual instructions telling users how to use them. They are fairly simple and user-friendly. And a shock is delivered only when absolutely needed.

11% of the respondents to the AHA survey were not willing or were hesitant to help in an emergency situation due to several reasons – among them lack of confidence in their life-saving skills, fear of harming the victim, and – take note – fear of possible legal consequences. From my point of view, the latter is an excuse of utmost selfishness.

Performing CPR and using an AED in emergency situation are life-saving actions. We never know when we will be needed to act and whose life we will be saving. It could be the stranger on the street but it could also be our children, our partners, our friends. That is why we should always be prepared.