CPR training. Staying alive, staying alive, ah, ah, ah, ah, staying aliiiii-ive…

I did CPR training once before, many years ago, when Ingrid was a baby – I remember paying extra attention to instructions about taking care about choking in babies. It’s way past time for a refresher.

In the UK they generally teach hands-only CPR, but in Sweden rescue breaths are part of the standard procedure. The practice dummies are equipped with small plastic bags as fake lungs. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it felt realistic, but the chest actually rose and fell as I blew in air, so that was kind of cool.

Another cool thing about this course was its thoroughness. We didn’t just practice CPR on its own, but also whole scenarios – from finding an unconscious person, through calling 112, giving them the necessary details without prompting, putting them on speaker, and only then starting CPR. It was hard to keep it all straight on first attempt!

I also learned about how defibrillators work, and got to practice with a training version. That was completely new to me and had I ever been in a real emergency situation before now, I would have had no idea where to even start, so I wouldn’t have tried using one even if it had been right next to me. Now I know what to do. In theory, at least.