Fort Worth mother meets MedStar 911 dispatcher who helped save her 3-week-old baby
Eight weeks after saving her baby’s life with the help of a MedStar 911 dispatcher, Fort Worth resident Erin Fennell and her 11-week-old son Parker met Valerie Carson on Friday.
Fennell called 911 after Parker, who was 3 weeks old at the time, stopped breathing. She said medical staff determined he had aspirated on his milk that he had been fed about an hour and a half before.
Parker had been crying, Fennell said, and she had been trying to calm him when he suddenly became unresponsive, turning white. While Fennell was on the phone with Carson, Parker became purple at one point, which the mother said terrified her.
Carson, who has worked with EMS for 41 years, walked Fennell through infant CPR procedures, which consists of lying the baby flat on their back, blowing five puffs of air into the lungs and chest compressions using two fingers.
In audio of the 911 call, Fennell’s voice is slightly shaky but not panicked. When she listened back to the call, Fennell said, she was surprised how calm she sounded considering how scared she had felt.
After Parker finally let out a cry, Fennell said, she wanted to break down in relief.
“I remember wanting to cry, but knowing we weren’t really out of the woods so it was not time for me to break down yet, but I wanted to,” she said. “That was the happiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life is that cry.”
After Parker was born, he stayed in the NICU for feeding and breathing issues and before he was able to go home, Fennell said, she and her husband watched a CPR video and used a doll to practice on. Outside of a brief training, she said, she never had full training on the process.
“It’s very different,” Fennell said regarding performing CPR on her own baby. “I was very panicked. Your thought process is, ‘Am I going to break a rib? Am I going to hurt an essential organ?’ But I have to do it; otherwise, I know he’s not going to be here with us, so you just kind of have to do what you have to do.”
On Friday Fennell and Parker came to the MedStar Mobile Healthcare center at 2900 Alta Mere Drive to meet Carson, who immediately embraced the two in a hug.
Fennell said she’s never going to forget Carson’s name, face or the phone call, thanking her for saving Parker’s life. Carson said it was a team effort and that both she and Fennell saved him.
Pediatric and child calls are the most difficult for dispatchers because it’s a non-visual environment, Carson said.
“It’s very stressful, but we know that the only way we’re going to have this kind of an outcome is if we have a family member on scene, calm them down, get them to follow directions — it gives them the best chance for survival,” she said.
Meeting Fennell and Parker was a rare opportunity to see a patient’s progress after a call, Carson said, and she was grateful to meet them.
Since the incident, Fennell said, Parker has discovered his hands and has spent every moment he can sitting next to his big brother, who is 5. Seeing him hit milestones means all the more to her now since the 911 call, she said.
This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 4:02 PM.
