CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A near tragedy happened when a family’s dog was accidentally suffocating their newborn baby girl.
It's what the mom learned before her daughter was born that helped save her life. The mother spoke exclusively to WCNC Charlotte's Michelle Boudin about how she narrowly avoided tragedy.
"It was the worst moment of my life," Ali Youngling, a first-time mom who did all the things to prepare for motherhood, said. "I screamed out, 'Oh my god! No, no, no, no, no.'"
"Oh my gosh it was scary," Youngling continued. "That’s why I did so much preparation for her arrival. We read all the books and took all the classes."
She never imagined she’d actually have to use the Novant Hospital CPR class she and her family did over Zoom while waiting for Addison to make her arrival.
"When I took the CPR class I remember telling my husband, 'We're never gonna have to use this but we need to know what to do,'" Youngling said.
It happened so fast - when Addison was sleeping.
"I walked out to our garage, to my car," Youngling recounted. "I walked back inside after a couple of minutes and our morkie, a little 18-pound dog Oliver, was lying across her face and she was partially blue, partially a light faded color and I ripped him off of her picked her up and her head fell back."
"She was completely unconscious and I gave her rescue breaths and I remembered from the CPR class that I needed to put my mouth over her nose and mouth. I gave her two rescue breaths and ran her into the kitchen because I remembered she needed to be on a firm surface. So I put her on our countertop and I started giving her CPR while calling 911."
Youngling stayed on the phone with 911 until the ambulance got there.
"At one point, [Addison] came back to and she screamed out and the lady on the phone said, "She's alive, keep doing what you're doing.' She informed me medic was here and I ran out with her in my arms because at that point she was fading in and out of consciousness her eyes would roll back in her head."
"I was screaming, 'Help me, help me,' and I got down in the grass I was crying and gagging, super overwhelmed and then the firefighters gave her oxygen and had her breathing by the time she got into the ambulance. But at that point, we didn’t know what the long-term effects would be."
Youngling said, in the moment, everything she learned in the class came back to her. She remembered the instructor having her sit on the floor with a stuffed animal and practicing compressions.
It’s important to note that infant CPR is different than adult CPR.
"Really you’re using different compressions," Sarah Ayoubi, a nurse who runs Novant Health’s Heart and Health Institute community outreach that includes CPR classes, said. "With a child, it's two fingers, encircling method or two fingers and compress. The fact that she was able to recognize what was going on to move quickly to do what she needed to do for her child, that is minutes that can make a difference with whether your organs get the oxygen they need. She saved her baby's life so it's amazing!"
Youngling couldn't be more grateful as a mother.
"Thankfully she is completely fine now and I'm just incredibly grateful that I took the class and knew what to do."
For more information on infant CPR classes, click here.
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Contact Michelle Boudin at mboudin@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.