(NEW YORK) — In a matter of seconds, a New York City mom said she worried her 10-month-old boy might not live to see his first birthday after he started to choke and suddenly could not breathe. But thanks to two police officers who saved the child, the “endless bundle of joy” is alive.
“Knowing that my son’s alive, he’s OK, he’s happy, he’s growing, I get to see his first birthday in a month, that’s the biggest blessing I could ever ask for,” the child’s mom, Azia Rodriguez, told ABC News on Wednesday.
On Oct. 10 at approximately 4:40 p.m., officers responded to a 911 call for a choking baby, and once on the scene, observed a “10-month-old male child in an unresponsive state due to an obstruction in his breathing passage,” the New York City Police Department said in a statement to ABC News.
Prior to alerting first responders, Rodriguez said her son, Makai Laboy, had just been put down for a nap. As she was watching him via the baby monitor camera, she noticed he was “tossing and turning back and forth.”
She then went into the room where he was sleeping in their Queens home and saw he was throwing up, she said.
Rodriguez said she immediately picked her son up and placed his chest on her palm to start patting his back, which caused more vomit to come out. Makai was then breathing normally and laughing, but proceeded to throw up again, Rodriguez said.
Then, “two seconds later,” she said phlegm began to come out of his mouth and he was “swallowing it back in,” which appeared to obstruct his airways.
Rodriguez called 911, and officers performed “lifesaving measures which caused the obstruction to be dislodged,” the NYPD said.
Rodriguez said the moment when officers saved Makai “happened so quickly” that she “didn’t acknowledge or grasp what had happened” until after she watched it unfold via the police’s body-worn camera on Tuesday.
In the video, officers are seen repeatedly patting the baby’s back until Makai — who was wearing pajamas adorned with police cars — was able to breathe on his own.
While reliving the harrowing moments was “a lot to process” for Rodriguez, she said she is “more confident in first responders than I’ve even been.”
“Words can’t thank the cops enough for what they did,” Makai’s father, 28-year-old Brandon Laboy, told ABC News
“It showed in a matter of seconds, that situation could have been a thousand times worse than it was. But with their instincts, their quick thinking, they were able to save his life,” Laboy said.
Rodriguez said she is planning on personally thanking the two officers who saved her son, saying she will be “hugging them and never letting them go.”
“When you become a mom, you hear stories like this, but you never think that you’d go through it,” Rodriguez said while holding back tears.
The family, who is getting ready to celebrate Makai’s first birthday on Nov. 12, encouraged parents to “always have a baby camera” and emphasized that in these situations, “every second counts.”
“All that matters is making sure there’s a smile on their face,” Rodriguez told ABC News.
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