When Lucy Nyaguthii took the CPR portion of the IRC Baltimore’s Child Care course, she never thought the training would help her save a life so soon afterwards. After completing the course, Lucy found employment as a live-in nanny taking care of an eight-month-old boy named William.
One morning, Lucy says, she heard the mother scream from upstairs. Lucy immediately ran to the nursery where she discovered William with his eyes rolled in the back of his head, not breathing.
As she learned in the childcare course, Lucy performed infant CPR until William was breathing on his own. As the mother was still panicked, Lucy called 911 and took William’s temperature while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The baby had a temperature of 109 degrees, so she immediately gave him Tylenol and wrapped his body in cold wet clothes.
Lucy reports to us that when the paramedics arrived, they asked her if she was a nurse, explaining she may have saved the boy’s life.
The childcare training was a joint effort between IRC, Child Care Aware and the Baltimore City Child Care Resource Center. The collaboration provided refugee women with 40 hours of training including child development, first aid, CPR and preventing SIDS.
Lucy came to Baltimore seeking asylum from her native Kenya in 2010. Although she has little formal education, she has been caring for children since she was 10 years old. Those long years of experience will continue to couple with the training she received from IRC to serve her – and the families she works with – for years to come
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