Front row and hard candy.

At church our family sits in the front row. So its hard to hide anything that happens...unruly children, bobbing sleepy heads or the fact that one almost has to do the heimlich on a kid.


Well that's what happened to me this weekend. Juliet and Eric got a piece of Candy, they were being pretty good. Sharing books and coloring without any huge fights. So all was well. Until Juliet grabbed my arm like she was dying and in fact she was well on her way. I looked at her and her throat was bulging and the veins were popping, her eyes were watery and all you could hear was a desperate choking sound as she tried to take a breath in while her body tried to dislodge the candy.

I bent her over a tad and hit her back as hard as I could...twice then I hear her breath in. So I bring her back up....big mistake (course you really aren't thinking to clearly when you see your only child choking to death) as soon as she came back up to take her second breath. In popped the candy back into her throat and thus starts the whole terrifying process over again.

by this point my dad had popped up from his seat by the Bishop and was on his way down. I was getting Juliet in the position to do the heimlich when the candy popped out. She took one massively huge breath in and I grabbed her and piratically ran out of the chapel. Not that we couldn't have stayed there. she was safe, breathing and the candy was out. I on the other hand was not ok and desperately needed to get out before I broke down in front of everyone.

So after my dad checked her I hurried to the bathroom, took her in the big stall with me and held her and cried. She told me I was ok and patted my back. I felt bad that she was the one that had to comfort me after what she had gone through, but I just could not help it.

Afterwards I ran into my good friend in the hallway and she took my mind off it. She always makes me laugh and it was perfect that she was out there when I needed that kind of a distraction.

Scary! I'm glad I didn't have to use the heimlich, but also glad that I had the peace of mind that I knew how to use it and didn't have to rely on someone else to get to her. That was a comforting thought.