

General first aid for babies and toddlers

Share the link to this class

St John provides helpful information regarding first aid for your newborn or small child. This includes bites, burns, high temperatures, choking and emergency care. This is a must watch for all soon to be parents.


Hello, welcome back. I'm here with Laura from St. JOHN. And he's here to talk to us about all of that an issue, what to do if there's a high temperature who to call if there's a problem and helpful information for new parents, and also go through I've got their first aid kits that if you're a health partners member, you'll get sent out, which has got quite a few of the valuable at first parents things in it. So I'll leave that on my laptop now. Hello, Laura. Hello.

Thank you for having now we always say what is your best advice for new parents? Parents, just to remain calm and not. Really it's an exciting time in your life and don't freak out. Okay, I guess especially in your industry and a lot of what we're going to talk about today, that is really important. Absolutely just kick your head on. And normally the first person to come across something that's not going well, and either completely freaked out or get rocked.

What are we going to do first? Yeah. So if you're the breakout person, they know that they'll probably be the second person that comes and goes, whatever. Absolutely. So we're going to come and try and go through some really important first steps. Obviously, this is just a video for you.

So we can't go through everything. And a lot of the time will refer back to maybe a first aid course that will be really helpful, but some easy things for you to remember. So in this pack, we've got four new parents. We have our sneaky but very important duck thermometer. Now hasn't the thermometer industry come forward? Certainly.

In the moment in this forehead tomorrow And there's your truck de undertown or underarm thermometer. But what would a normal temperature be for a baby? So, if the temperatures under 38, that's generally considered a good safe temperature, but it's when it's 38 or above is when you would want to seek some medical support for that and seek the medical aid. Yeah. Or think, have I got too many lines? Yeah, absolutely.

So it could be a matter of assessing you know, where your babies how many layers on them, how many blankets, you know, if every environment, they're in the cost or the cost that you might want to get them out and put them down naturally, perfectly. And so don't get your knickers in a twist. If they're 38 and grandma who's the hot board, it's been hanging on to the bed with the blanket, maybe take the blanket off. Give it maybe half an hour and then recheck your baby. To be honest, generally, if a baby is unwell, it's quite obvious, they're irritable, they're cranky. Your instinct is Yeah, thing wrong, and you might take their temperature and they might have just woken up from a nap.

And then, you know, you take them out of their sleeping bag and their quilts and things like that. And you might notice I couldn't quite quickly. Yeah. So yeah, it couldn't hurt to you know, give it a little bit of time. You know, calling for a doctor. Yes.

And obviously, the thermometer industry, which is very dramatic, quite very expensive. Oh my god, these forehead thermometers are like $90. And you know, sometimes having a trusty basic one just to double check with because it might be they tend to have very specific ways of measuring temperatures so maybe it's not being done exactly right. And you get a very higher a very low temperature. So sometimes just doing a double check before you get your knickers in a twist, and just touching your baby and feeling it and thinking Oh, God, you feel hot. Oh, actually, the thermometer is saying that you are hot but I don't feel like you're absolutely you wouldn't really put the thermometer Unless you, you know, tap their forehead and you can actually feel Yeah.

And they're really quite cranky. But if you know some babies with a very high temperature can can look quite unwell. And there's such a thing as a febrile seizure. Absolutely. Yeah. Fever convulsion.

So not every child with a finger will have a febrile convulsion pre rolls, just a fancy word for a favor. So if you're a convulsion, you know, if your child is having one, it happens for little children and babies. Generally under the age of six, you'll notice the twitching and the jerking this you could notice the rolling back of the eyes and lips can go into glorifies Congress, you know, but you know, it's, it's something that happens to children, they they have difficulty regulating their temperature and that could be a sudden spike in temperature. So if it does happen it you know, it can be really scary, but it's, you know, just move your child out of the environment. That's making moves right there in the court cost, they pulled them out, take their clothes off, let them cool down naturally. So you wouldn't sponge them or anything like that.

You might fan them they open up a window or a door or something to let them call their but let them cool down naturally. Normally, that's enough to just stop that from happening and get them in. Okay. Yeah. And you know, if that was to happen, it might be that you want to get a follow up medical. Because obviously, I've got a high temperature and I've had a convulsion, there's a reason.

So whether you know, you can get into the gap around quite quickly. Or if if it's two o'clock in the morning and your only option is maybe a home doctor or a trip to your local emergency department. Just more to think well yes, the commotion is one part of it but also, you know, is this is there something else going on? never hurt to get them to sit down and sorry If it was the first time that an you know, parents would be freaked out if there was a febrile convulsion the very first time that it happened. Yeah. So for the first time, it's good, we always recommend to call for an ambulance, because it is their first time and it would be, they really need to be checked out just to see if there's anything on the line there.

If it is something that's been happening a few times you will have some advice from the doctors from the first time that has happened to Nori, you know that it should just be a doctor's visit should be sufficient unless you're, you know, you've been instructed otherwise from from your doctor. Yes. And obviously, if your baby has a high temperature, but always encouraging you to get some medical advice, you know, don't just give panadol because there's generally a reason for a temperature. So just by making it go away, doesn't mean that was treated the course. Obviously, once you've had that input, then you're going to be told by that health professional, the best way to manage it. And we know that panadol certainly lowers the temperature but it certainly doesn't treat the cause.

So you know, first steps is to identify what a high Temperature is and then to pick the most appropriate follow up for that little, little human at the right time. And parents, especially first baby, first time, you know, you think, oh, it babies 35 I've checked it twice. The house isn't too hot, the baby's really irritable or really sleepy. And you know, you might bring one of the health lines on the back of your blue book. And you'll notice that there's the health direct line or the pregnancy birth and baby. Both of them are government funded health lines.

If you're really unsure of the first steps, they're great resource someone to kind of go through the key points, what are you going to do and they will generally all encourage you to have some sort of medical follow up. And also knowing that when you register your baby, do I have ambulances cover, you know, if you are going to be calling an ambulance or a febrile seizure is this going to be covered? Or how but you know, ambulance cover itself is not very expensive if it's not included. Just having that reassurance is knowing you're not going to be slumped 1500 bucks for a trip to the emergency department is good to know. So that you're not going to feel a bit concerned about the choices that might be given on the Help lines. And other things.

Sorry, just kind of in down for a second is some parents will arm themselves with something like this, which is the first day book, and which might in some cases help to give you some insight into the best treatment. And in some cases, you know, it might be a high temperature, what am I going to do? Or you know, just using your common sense as well about what to do that often, you know, if you think oh, I did the first aid cost, and I can't retain all of that having a resource that's not Google. Absolutely. It is very, very important and maybe something that's been written by someone that's a professional in this area like St. JOHN. That's what they do.

So yeah, that's important tonight. Scary hot temperatures. We haven't finished yet. So what if my daddy Brenda, and her anti publicity has been coughing and she's coughing and coughing and coughing and she wants to come and see Brenda she's very excited about it. What should we do? Should she come out feeling very well done they should not be visiting no baby or anyone like that but first it's in any infection control absolutely to minimize transfer.

So sorry Felicity and you know things like hand washing alcohol gels. Yeah, yeah. So we always recommend if you are a new string first I don't so much for watching if you can't get to a top and you know, emergency situations, you know if you can get you some hands on because I give you a heads a bit of a warship, so it's really, really best practices. TV shows they always use alcohol by Was I watching a new TV show and he got this scotch smashed his head? And it's that, don't we know that our hands are the biggest transfer of germs? So you know you caught on let me give you baby like all of a sudden you have transferred across an eating meat.

Yeah. But it's important to quarantine yourself as well. Yeah. And that's if your baby somewhere. Yeah, don't take it. And if you've got a new little baby, especially with an immature immune system, you know, being like mother, they're like noon.

You can come later, when you feeling a bit better. Absolutely. And all the hand gel in the world. Yeah, I ain't gonna stop. James if you're coughing and sneezing all over the place or you've got diarrhea because all of those bands are transferable not only to the mother but also to the baby. And we know that was breastfeeding.

The mom does, her body does the very best that can to protect the baby by creating the right antibodies that the baby needs at the time. But, you know, it can only protect it so much. And that little baby, especially in the first eight weeks has this new system that's trying to get started. So you know, really being careful with sick people and trying to limit that transfer of germs, which we say all the time. So you have to be mean to Felicity so don't come over and she's like, all right, well, you know, next week will all still be here. And so what about things like choking?

I was always terrified and my kids I think everyone's getting choking. But when you become a mom, but something that really plays on your mind as to how to how do I deal with it? I'm sorry, I do have a mannequin here. Would you like what's the mannequins now? Let's call her Okay, sorry for choking for a baby. And what we want to do is pop them into the recovery position.

So recovery position, Papa hands like sorry, around the right size or not around my mouth and have our arm down their body and we loop that in and turn them over into recovery and that's recovery for a baby. Yeah. Now recovery could feel better on on another hand it over to your left handed right handed. Okay, so for choking, we want to call an ambulance as possible for an infant. So we'd be calling an ambulance, we shout out to someone else, if I can, and if I can just call them pop them on speaker and then you treat the baby. And so the way that we would treat triking for an infant is to give them a bit of a backstory, and it would look like want to check to see if the object was we want to do five checking each time because it might have just watched the visiting Mmm, you don't want to keep hitting it.

And is it the same process if it wasn't at all? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't. I don't would be sitting in a chair as most people generally check when they're sitting down yet but you know, babies can see they got eyesight better than you and I'll see things they'll pop them in their mouth. Yes, I'll find things you don't know. What do you want to do fight back close.

If that didn't work, we know that ambulance is on its way what will end up doing it from chest dress, but we'd normally pop them on a hard surface surface. So on it on a table or something hard? Yeah. So what we do, it's, it's similar to how we do our compressions CPR. So straight under the arm. This is the part that we're actually hitting.

We want to do five of those that we're pushing in. 345 work and what we're going to do is we're going to pop them back over. Okay and we're gonna go again we're going to keep doing five and five so five that close yet by Chester us we keep doing that until the ambulance comes. Now this is the baby's breathing, okay, if baby stops breathing then we go straight into safety to be out here which we're going to cover all about zone and you know sometimes with a baby a new baby when they're breastfeeding they will just choke briefly on breast milk. And so in those situations that can just be sitting the baby out it's a bit like you know, when you go on went down the wrong call. And I got really today change cover color very much and you just sit them up, they're back around and they're like, so they do correct themselves with that kind of milky wrong part.

But obviously, a true choking on something can look as, as you said, babies can be very, you know, start to grab and reach and get all sorts of things in their little mouth. So it's great to know and that's First Responders stuff is very important. Yes, you don't have time to be talking to them violence if you're the only person around Yeah, you really need to be proactive there, have them on speaker managing that hopefully someone else is around that can do that for you. Yes, you can. Which is good. All right.

Sunscreen and sunburn is another interesting thing I personally get asked it a lot in, in my practice, because no one wants their babies to get burnt or have any sun's out. You know, what sort of sunscreen this one says I can't use it for six months. So what do I do and when can I take my baby out? And it is important to read the manufacturer's information. babies get sunburned just like we get sunburned, so you're not going to take them to the beach and just plop them on the sand because not only that they can get things like sunstroke, which can happen very quickly and because they're a smaller little person, and but certainly reading the manufacturer's information. If you're in A situation when you know that there's a chance that your baby will be exposed to sun using a sunscreen appropriate to their age, which you'll be able to find in all of those shots.

But if they did, the other thing is burns themselves. I remember when my baby was little I was having a coffee cuz he never slept in my neighborhood and then the coffee accidentally spill on him. And that kind of first responder been kind of advice. What would you generally say to parents, I really say with burns to all burns are treated the same. So cool running water, okay. Got babies basically tiny, it gets really awkward.

You don't want to put a whole baby underneath the culture out there not going to like that and then respond well to that and they could have quite a reaction to that. So we just want to call that area, just that area. But yeah, and it also comes down to you know, the safety, you know, We're having trouble cups always really handy as well. Nice, Mario's got, you know, making sure your stuffs been handled, to try to prevent those sorts of things. But yes, sometimes I'm trading something on that such a little thing. It's really, really hard.

It is and that's where a lot of the, again the help lines and seeing a doctor or if it's a more severe burn, then we want you to call an ambulance or get some, some quite quick medical advice. And, you know, a sunburn can a bad tanglin can present as badly as it is a burn. And so yeah, you know, not feeling like, oh, what am I gonna do, you know, get that appropriate advice, and I had a treat well, excellent. Well, the last thing we're going to cover is that, Dr. ABC, which I know Well, I go through a lot lots of education. And it certainly there's still a huge amount of the population that don't know what to do in an emergency situation. Absolutely.

Yeah, sorry, I'm at ABC. So I mean, D day for danger. It seems so unnatural, but it's something we all do every day really, we don't enter an environment that's dangerous with danger or casualties. So, you know, just assessing danger with a baby. I mean, you could be danger being hysterical. So obviously you need to calm yourself down, you know, you know, you're talking about with your coffee, you know, putting the coffee cup down, you know, making sure that no more further you know, danger is happening.

So just assessing and make sure that you know, it's safe to respond. Responses always. You know, as a mommy check for responses. You know, your, your baby's having a really good sleep and you're thinking on the euro and we check the danger or we check for Responsible the time on the We obviously aren't gonna be clapping and babies, we might do for an adult to check for response. So the best way to check for response on a baby, step up your finger in their hands when they're sleeping. What they will do is poke your finger, okay?

Sorry, you don't have to wake them both to sleep, that you will know that they were. The other thing, you can just tickle their feet as well. You just want to get some kind of a reaction to know they're okay. So we've got a response. That's great, you know, everything's okay. But if you're not getting a response, that's when you know, we really should be sending for help leveling for an ambulance or calling out to someone to call for an ambulance.

Then we move on to checking the airway. We just want to make sure that nothing's blocking the airway. I think this is really important. I mean, it's, it's really important for everybody but babies in particular, are renowned for putting things in their mouth It's really important that we took that away, just make sure that nothing's walking away. If something's blocking the airway, help them in recovery, and then go to the gym. Okay?

As I was trying to scoop that out, and then we need to check for breathing, okay, sorry. The way that we check for breathing is by looking, listening and feeling. Or you might be able to hear it free, you might be able to see and feel your and you really need to know that baby's breathing, you have to, you know, pick up on those three things. But basically, by doing these three things, Look, listen, feel for no more than 10 seconds. You know, if I was if I was breathing, then you know, quite yet if I just don't bring them down, which I think discussing later, yes. And you know, it's important, because I've had it firsthand actually a man whose baby was was fine and then started to choke and then stops breathing and She just completely freaked down and was gonna have to anyway.

And so it's important, you know, you can tell that there's something not right and to take all my set split second, like deep breath. And you know, I have to go through these doctors ABC and so sending for help. So even if you're freaking out, no, it's not breathing, you could have already started to make some contact with ambulance so that they can also help to talk you through today. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the other thing too. We feel like we have to retain all the information, retain as much as you can.

But in those emergency situations, we should have an ambulance on you know, well still trying to deal with this data going to be able to refresh them on these things into, you know, the databases that you might not remember. Yes. And they you know, very quick to answer the phone with that you talk to talk to you through what to do, and but we'll go through the more in depth research, initial research stuff and in Just a second. So I'm just going to run through Action Plan, which is our go to in any first aid situation. Okay, so the first thing that we do is we check for dangerous, we just want to make sure that it's safe for us to approach a casualty. In this case, it's a baby.

So just want to make sure that there's nothing dangerous in the way and if we can move those dangers of those dangers, then we do sorry. And when it's safe to approach we do. So we go through danger, then we want to go through response. So the way that we check for a response on a baby is just use our fingers or I found just in their hands like so. What will happen as a mom, you check for a response on a baby a lot. You don't really want to wake them so you're gonna copy their face, in case they're sleeping because most of the time the house they think they just want to see a thumb their fingers will curl around, if their fingers curled around your finger or your thumb and you know, you've got a response and you know, everything's okay.

Okay. But if you're not getting a response, that's concerning. Sorry. I We do our fingers and thumbs in the hands. The other thing we can do is just a little tickle, tickle, tickle. And normally that's enough to get a response.

It says my response, that's when we really need to benefit help, we need to call for an ambulance. So if there's someone else nearby, shout out to them, ask them to call an ambulance for you. If you're on your arm, grab your phone, call for an ambulance, call triple zero Papa on hold so that you can help help your baby in the meantime. So once you send for help, the next thing we want to do is check the airway. What we want to do is to say that there's nothing blocking the airway. And we don't want to talk baby's head back to Parker's baby's job developing the next two.

I'm quite sensitive. So just to the head back just a little bit and just say there's anything blocking the airway. If there is something in there, what we need to do is get it out and that's how we do that is we put baby in recovery and like this, around the chin. Put that head put them into recovery with your finger. You want to Try and get that object out. Okay?

Once you've done that, then you want to check the breathing. Okay? You want to look, listen and feel okay? For about about 10 seconds, one more than 10 seconds, okay? So if I put baby on the back, if we check the airway and there's nothing in the airway, then we can go straight into checking for breaking it down like sorry, for hand on the chest. Listen, and we'll look to see if we can save it.

If it is breathing, then we'll pop it back into recovery while we wait for the ambulance to come. Baby is not waiting, then we need to go straight into us a PR. So what we'll do is we're basically straight into the markets in the center of the chest is where we're hitting. So we're going straight through here without two fingers, and we want to go straight down to about a third of the depth of the chest. And we're gonna do 30 compressions I've taught 30 compressions we're gonna do, we're gonna do two breaths back just a little bit. We should see a little Wrath of the chessboard in putting in a little breath.

We put in our two breath, and we go straight back into our compressions and we do 30 and 230 and 230. And so, when you to put the breath in your mouth will probably go over the noise as well. That's okay. The aircon goes in through the mouth and the noise that is absolutely fine. Okay, so you know that the ambulance is on the spine and you just keep doing CPR in the meantime with your 30 compressions and two breaths. If you feel uncomfortable during the breath.

What you can do is you can just do the compressions but we do recommend doing the breath You know, when, if baby starts breathing again, you'll be able to see the baby be able to see, you know, you will stop, the baby will start to move, you'll be able to hear those breath coming in. And there should be some kind of job, it might stop vomiting, those sorts of things. And once it is breathing, what we want to do is talk baby into recovery. But sorry, while we wait for the ambulance to come, and we want to monitor the baby to sleep as any other injuries or anything else that we might not have noticed beforehand, when a keep baby in recovery, while we wait for that to come. Well, that was all very interesting. Thank you so much for coming and giving us some, you know, emergency information and a great basis to start from.

But obviously in this little, you know, small, small course, online, we can't teach you everything. So we really encourage all new parents to go until the first day of course, there's lots of specific courses for new Karen Yeah, absolutely. So we have a caring for kids. I think we run most evenings and quite a few evenings and on the weekends. And that specific, obviously, first aid and management of of, you know, small child issues. And with a lot of health funds, they're really encouraging you to do it and you will get a rebate as well.

So it becomes quite an expensive, but really, you know, how can you put a price on knowing what to do in those emergency situations. And so thank you for for tuning in. We have another section on first aid for the slightly older baby and a bit further along in the course but hopefully that's got some great information for you.

Sign Up