A quick-thinking mother became a hero when she selflessly dropped everything and ran over to assist a 5-week-old infant who had stopped breathing at a store in Oregon.
Diane Bauer said her teenage daughter Charlotte noticed a young mother in distress at the store in Beaverton on Wednesday, March 28. They quickly realized an infant in a car seat, in the next aisle over, had stopped breathing.
Bauer dropped everything and went over to see whether she could help.
“He was as stiff as a doll. I couldn’t even tilt his little head back,” Bauer told Portland Tribune.
Bauer, who is a Girl Scout leader and had recently been re-certified in CPR, said she told the cashier in the Fred Meyer store to call emergency services while she started to perform CPR on the infant.
She said she tried sweeping the baby’s mouth and throat for foreign objects and gave the infant several puffs until his chest rose.
“The only room that was available was the little check writing stand,” Bauer told Fox 12.
“Those breaths started to go in and I continued until he came to, and in the meantime the mom was calling 911.”
Fortunately, the baby started to become alert and breathing on his own again, reported the news station. Bauer and her daughter then stayed until paramedics from Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue arrived and took over.
The whole rescue took about five minutes, Bauer said.
“I thought, a minute? Charlotte said, oh, no, it was like five minutes. But when you’re in the middle of something like that, you just can’t tell,” she told Portland Tribune.
The Girl Scout leader credited her daughter who first noticed the distressed mother and alerted her to the emergency.
Bauer said she had recently finished her CPR recertification last month at her job at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital Foundation, reported the newspaper.
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