Totally forgot to update you guys on my course last weekend! It went really well, and I feel quite a bit less terrified than I was before.

Other than calling 9-1-1, I didn’t really know what to do in an emergency. Except panic. I only knew the first aid training I’d received in Grade 6 in our babysitting course. Not super current, right?

So after months of saying “Oh, I really should do that,” I finally got my act together and signed up for a two-day course with St. John Ambulance that covered all the basics of emergency childcare. CPR for children and infants, and choking for children and infants were the big topics — and the ones I was especially paranoid about eager to learn. But we also learned emergency care for bleeding, bites, burns, seizures, hypothermia, even amputation — yikes!

The course was great. There were three other moms of babies/young children, one expectant couple, and one woman who worked in a daycare. It was so nice to chat with other moms who were taking the course because they, too, are mega-paranoid about their babies choking. I’m not alone in my crazy twitchy ways!

There was a lot of content, but the instructor went through everything very clearly. It felt kind of cool to be back in a classroom setting — says the girl who swore she’d never go back to school once she graduated from university. We each got a thick book to study and wrote a test, and I felt my suck-uppy keener ways returning as I was always the first person to arrive. We watched videos, practiced the techniques on dummies and on each other, and got to ask as many emergency-related questions as we could think of — and trust me, I had plenty!

I went into the course expecting that I would just feel a little less terrified when it came to caring for Baby Boy — particularly feeding him finger food and worrying about him choking. And while I do feel more confident about that now — I know how to help him if it does happen — the confidence extended into feeling more capable about handling emergencies in general — babies, kids, adults, you name it.

In fact, I was so excited after finishing the course that I may have “practiced” my new skills on Darling Husband and Little Sis. Little Sis took the brunt of my enthusiasm, actually, as I spent more than an hour pretending to do CPR on her, dislodge pretend gumballs stuck in her throat, and wrap “severe bleeds” on her legs (using her scarf and napkins). She was very patient.

So if you are anything like me — a paranoid android — I highly recommend taking a first aid course. You can’t prevent every emergency from happening — although wouldn’t that be nice? — but knowing some basic skills gives helps to put your mind at ease.

Plus it gives you the right to tie up bandage your sibling with dinner napkins in the name of “practicing,” and that’s just fun.