A mother is encouraging all parents to get first aid training after saving her baby’s life when he choked.

Natasha Davis, 28, from Aldington, was doing her weekly shop in Tesco at Park Farm, Ashford, with her nine-month old son Jai.

She had given him a soft apple crisp to keep him occupied whilst she made her way around the supermarket.

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“I gave him something which I thought he’d suck but instead he tried to swallow the whole thing,” said Natasha.

“I turned around and I could see his mouth was open and his face was bright red.

“He was making no noise: no crying, nothing. I could tell he was choking.”

Luckily, Natasha is a trained first aider at work so she quickly took action.

“I knew what to do thanks to first aid training I’d received from St John Ambulance,” she said.

“I laid Jai face down along my arm, and gave some firm back slaps. The piece of apple crisp flew out and he was fine, like nothing had happened.

“You don’t expect things like this to happen to you as a parent, but you do need to know what you should do in these emergency situations.

“Without this knowledge, I would have had to shout for help, and by the time it came it may have been too late.”

A month after the scare, which happened in February, Natasha took a refresher course at St John’s Ambulance as some of the techniques have changed since she trained three years ago.

One of these techniques is how to treat a choking baby; instead of lying the baby across your arm, as Natasha was taught, it is now advised that babies are laid face down along the thigh and supported by the arm.

Deborah Adwent, the operations manager for St John Ambulance, said: “Learning first aid only takes a few hours of your time, yet it could help you be the difference between a life lost and a life saved.”