Infant CPR Class in Fishers, IN: What New Parents Learn in a Two Hour CPR Party

New parents in Fishers get a lot of advice and very little practice. A CPR party from Tiny Hearts CPR is two hours of practice: an infant CPR class taught in your own living room, for you and everyone who will ever be alone with the baby. Grandparents, the babysitter, the aunt who lives in Noblesville, the friend who is on the pickup list. Here is what those two hours cover, who should be in the room, and how a party is different from a certification class.

What a CPR party is

A CPR party is an in home class for up to ten guests, taught on the American Heart Association Family and Friends curriculum. It is not a certification course and it does not produce cards. It exists for one reason: so that the adults around an infant know what to do in the minutes before help arrives, and have done it with their hands rather than watched it on a screen. The instructor brings the manikins and the equipment. You supply the living room and the people.

Who teaches it

Tiny Hearts CPR is taught by Pam Goldsberry, a registered nurse with more than twenty five years in labor and delivery. That background is the point of the class. The instruction comes from someone who has resuscitated newborns as part of the job and who teaches the way a nurse explains something to a scared parent: plainly, in order, with the hands doing the work.

Infant CPR, step by step

The first hour is infant CPR. How to check whether a baby is responsive. When to call 911 and what to say. Where and how to place your hands for compressions on an infant, how deep, how fast, and how to count. How to give breaths that fit a baby's small face. How to keep going until help arrives. Every guest practices on an infant manikin until the motion is familiar, and the instructor corrects hand position and pace one person at a time.

Choking response for infants and children

Choking is the emergency parents fear most and the one they are most likely to face. The class covers how to recognize choking in an infant versus a child, the back blows and chest thrusts used for an infant, the abdominal thrusts used for a child, and what to do if the baby becomes unresponsive. This portion is practiced too, on the manikin, because the sequence is easy to understand and easy to forget under stress.

Child CPR and the rest of the household

Because most families have more than an infant in the house, the class also covers CPR for a child, and the differences from an infant. Time permitting, the instructor answers the questions every room asks: what about the dog, what if I break a rib, what if I do it wrong. The honest answers are part of the class, including the one about Good Samaritan protection for people who help in an emergency.

Why practice in the living room beats a video

Everyone has watched a CPR video. Almost nobody has done infant compressions with their own hands on a manikin while someone corrected their depth and pace. The difference shows up at three in the morning: a parent who has practiced starts, and a parent who has only watched freezes. A CPR party puts the practice in the room where the emergency would actually happen, on your own floor, with the phone you would actually use to call 911, and it puts it in the hands of the people who would actually be there. The instructor can also walk the house with you: where the baby sleeps, where the nearest flat surface is, what to say to the dispatcher about your address. That is the part a video cannot do.

Who should be in the room

Anyone who will ever be alone with the baby. Parents first, but a party is most valuable when it includes grandparents, regular sitters and the friends or relatives who cover an evening. The people in the room are the people who will be there when it happens, and a class that only the parents took leaves the grandparents guessing on a Saturday afternoon. Ten guests is the limit so everyone gets hands on time.

What to have ready for the party

Very little. A living room with floor space for everyone to kneel, a couple of hours on a day when the people who matter can be there, and the questions you have been carrying around since the baby arrived. The instructor brings the manikins, the practice equipment and the handouts. Parents often schedule the party in the last weeks of pregnancy so the skills are fresh when the baby comes home, and families with a newborn already in the house schedule it for a nap window, with the baby in the next room and the grandparents on the floor.

If you need a certification card instead

A CPR party is for families. Teachers, daycare staff, coaches and healthcare providers who need a certification card take a different class: Heartsaver CPR, AED and first aid for lay rescuers, or BLS for healthcare providers, both with same day cards. Tiny Hearts CPR teaches those too, and they can be scheduled for a group at a school, a daycare or a practice. The party is the right choice for the household; the certification course is the right choice for the workplace.

Booking a CPR party in Fishers

Tiny Hearts CPR teaches across Indianapolis and the surrounding areas, including Fishers, Carmel, Noblesville and the rest of Hamilton County, and a party is scheduled around your household: a weekend afternoon, an evening before the baby arrives, a Sunday when the grandparents are in town. Reach out to Tiny Hearts CPR to pick a date, and bring everyone who holds the baby.