Hello!  Thankfully I’ve only called 9-1-1 a couple times related to emergencies with my kids – one time I had hardly any cell reception, so I wanted to help educate people on the texting 9-1-1 option and let you know I’ve gone through some scary situations with my kids and am striving to be fearless – hope to encourage you to do the same!  Finding joy through my faith in God and being thankful has helped me through so much, but to be honest I still struggle with anxiety related to my children.  I am thankful that my strength and peace continue to be renewed even despite certain situations.

CALLING 9-1-1.  When my oldest daughter was four months old I was busy learning to be a mom, working part time, while at the same time trying to be a good wife too.  One day while nursing her, I was on the computer, not fulling focusing on the nursing, and she scratched her cornea.  She went limp.

I tried CPR repeatedly, with no response.  She wasn’t breathing.  It felt like forever before she took a breath again – in the meantime I called 9-1-1.  Thankfully we have police that patrol our town 24-7, as well as an ambulance service right in town, so they came very quickly.  By the time that they came, thankfully she had started breathing again.  The event lit up the neighborhood – one of my neighbors gently said to me aftewards ‘it looked like you had quite a scare’.  On the ambulance ride to the hospital, the situation happened again.  Thankfully the ambulance crew put an oxygen mask on my daughter right away but it was still scary!  There were other details to this experience but the bottom line – I had to keep praying and trusting God, relying on his good plans and love for me.  He gave me the faith to leave her in day care after this instance, have two more kids, etc.  Also a PSA: clip those young babies’ nails!  Also try to not multi-task while nursing!  Over the next weeks this situation repeated itself – one time at day care – I had to learn to not overreact.  I’m so thankful that she’s out of that phase!

TEXTING 9-1-1.  I wish I had known this a year ago when my three young girls and I got stuck in an elevator late one evening at church after an event.  Here they are in this professional picture taken shortly after the incident.

Anyway, here’s the story…the power went out in the church – it was about 8:30pm, so no staff was around, and the elevator got stuck underground in such a way that I had intermittent cell reception.  Thankfully a text to my husband went through after about 10 minutes of waiting.  The call to 9-1-1 didn’t go so well, as they couldn’t hear me, but the call eventually got pinged so the police came.  But, if I had know about texting 9-1-1, I would have done that first thing!  My daughters and I prayed – it had been about 15 minutes, and it was getting very hot in the elevator.  My middle daughter (then 3) said that she saw an angel in the elevator, and shortly there after, a woman who had been cleaning up after the event called through the walls “is anyone in there?”  She said that she had heard a voice.  She was the ONLY person in the building and she happened to walk by!  Total God thing, but also a PSA: text 911 in the “To” field for text messaging.  Send a short message with no photos.  Include the location of the emergency, municipality and type of help needed before sending.  This is especially good when cell reception is bad, or you’re in a situation where you cannot easily talk (i.e. intruder).

These are things that aren’t fun to talk about, but I hope this info helps someone out there!

– Kristen