Mum issues urgent warning after newborn baby stops breathing during car ride

As a new parent, it’s your absolute worst nightmare that anything bad might happen to your tiny baby, let alone anything life threatening. A Scottish mother has shared a stark warning to all parents after her three-week-old daughter began to turn blue and froth at the mouth following a two hour car journey. 

Kristi and Christopher Clark were on their way home with their newborn daughter Harper and their older daughter Malena, making sure to take baby Harper out of her car seat every time they stopped for a break.

However, when the family ran into traffic, Harper ended up staying in her car seat for two hours before they all arrived home. When speaking to the Daily Record, Kristi explained that when they finally arrived home it was well past her older child’s bedtime, so while they were getting her ready for bed, they left Harper in her car seat for 15 minutes longer.

“My husband got Harper out and put her on his knee but she looked like she couldn’t get comfy so he laid her down on her mat and she was kicking about. I told him her lips looked blue and then he pointed out how red her cheeks were,” Kristi recalled.

Harper then proceeded to foam at the mouth and nose. “It was so scary. My husband was holding her and patting her back and I was trying to get her mouth open to make sure she didn’t swallow her tongue but her jaw was clenched shut,” Kristi continued.

“It wasn’t like a normal seizure, she was arching her back and throwing her head back,” she added, before going on to talk about the traumatic journey to the hospital. “The car journey was horrendous. I was trying to make sure she was breathing but I was shaking so much I couldn’t tell. My husband kept asking if she was breathing and I just had to say ‘I don’t know.’”

“She kept closing her eyes and I was trying to keep her awake but then they would glaze over. My wee girl was so panicked as well. The whole way there all I could think was ‘we are going to lose her’. I can’t even talk about it without getting upset.”

Thankfully, the medical team were able to revive Harper and she went on to make a full recovery. However, Kristi and Christopher were later told that their daughter suffered a seizure due to severe oxygen deprivation, caused by her sitting in her seat for over two hours.

When Harper was then laid down on the mat, her little body couldn’t cope with the sudden increase in oxygen levels, which led to her terrifying episode.

The doctors told them that any baby who spends more than an hour in a car seat can suffer from this scary condition, which is why it’s important to remember to take regular breaks during family car journeys, and to take your babies out of their car seat each time.

“When the consultant told us it was the car seat I couldn’t believe it. I thought ‘there’s no way’. I couldn’t understand why nobody had ever told us. We had obviously heard about not keeping babies in car seats overnight because it causes curvature of the spine but not about anything like this,” Kristi said.

“I would tell every parent to just really carefully watch their babies and if they don’t absolutely need to be in the car seat take them out because it is not worth what we had to go through,” she warned.

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