I am the mother of three small children and I wish to share with you the story that inspired me to start this organization.

It was winter; we were at a friend's house in the quiet suburbs enjoying dinner together. Their one-year-old son was sitting with us in his high chair, enjoying his suitably small, seedless pieces of watermelon.
Suddenly the child started coughing. The parents tried to help but with no success. Everyone sat there, feeling helpless, looking on in rising panic as the boy started to struggle to breathe. 

At this point, using the knowledge acquired just weeks earlier at a CPR class at my pediatrician's office (not certified), I decided to act: I took the child out of his chair and performed the child version of the Heimlich maneuver. The watermelon came out.

Or so it seemed?

We all went back to our dinner but the boy kept on crying, distressed. His mother, with a mother's intuition, said 'Something is wrong'. She took him out of his chair again, and within seconds, the boy stopped breathing, lost consciousness, and started turning blue. His parents, screaming 'my baby is dying', panicked - as did everybody else. Someone called 911, but it took them precious minutes to get there. If no-one did anything, the child might choke to death before anyone came.

I don't know quite how I kept my calm but I did, and told the father, who at the time was holding his son, to put him on the floor and I started CPR. After a few seconds that for us lasted like forever he started breathing on his own. By the time the police and the paramedics came, he was 'back'. I now know that I saved his life. It turns out that a small piece of watermelon was blocking his trachea, and that there was no open airway. By giving him CPR, I actually pushed the watermelon further down, which opened one side for the air to enter one of his lungs and he was able to breathe on his own using this one lung.

The child is now fine. He was taken to the hospital and there was no permanent damage to his lungs. But a few more minutes and this story would have been another tragedy.

What would you have done?
Would you know how to react to a mother screaming 'my baby is dying!'
What would you do when it is not your own child?
How would you feel if nobody knew what to do?

I'm no hero, all I did was take a CPR class and stay calm enough to apply what I'd learned. If you take care of children and\or you know of someone who does, please take a CPR class and get them to take one too.

A CPR class only takes a couple of hours and it can save lives!