Hero mom saves 17-day-old baby in cardiac arrest by performing CPR: ‘He was blue’

A mom saved her baby’s life after waking up in the middle of the night with a “gut feeling.”

Lucy Robin woke up to find her 17-day-old son blue, freezing cold and not breathing — instantly assuming the worst.

Luckily, Robin had CPR training, and she used it to get her child, Sammie, breathing again while waiting for an ambulance.

Her son “would not be here today if it wasn’t for my training,” the 35-year-old mom told South West News Service.

Sammie — a twin to sister Sophie — was born at 33 weeks with neither a heartbeat nor regular breathing. Before getting discharged to go home, he spent nine days in neonatal intensive care.

Though everything was “clinically fine” with Sammie when he got home, Robin “had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right with him.”

After putting her baby to bed at 11 p.m. and going to sleep herself, Robin woke up at 2:30 a.m. just knowing something was wrong.

“I sat upright in bed. I didn’t even wake up slowly. I literally sat up straight away,” she shared. “As I sat up, I remember a voice in my head saying, ‘Look at the baby.’”

She found Sammie in his cot blue and cold to the touch when she picked him up, with a “tiny trickle of blood” from his nose.

“I shouted my husband, he woke up and I said, ‘The baby’s not breathing,’” Robin said. “My first thought was: s–t. My second was: he’s dead. My third: I need to do something. My training kicked in — I had been taught CPR at work.”

As her husband made phone calls, Robin began CPR on Sammie.

“I got his breathing back but not fully; he was taking a breath once every 30 seconds,” she said.

Her husband called an ambulance, and Robin recalls him calling a family friend to share that “Sammie’s gone.”

The paramedics arrived just in time — within 7 minutes — to take Sammie, who recently turned 1, to the hospital where they “stabilized” his breathing after two-and-a-half hours.

“I was giving CPR and the next minute my house was full of paramedics and police,” Lucy said. 

Sammie remained in the hospital for four weeks, but doctors couldn’t determine what exactly caused the baby to go into peri-arrest — despite multiple brain scans.

The mom of seven has now made it her mission to raise awareness and educate future parents on CPR in case they ever find themselves in a similar situation.

“It’s a couple of hours of training, but for Sammie it was worth a lifetime.”

“I think it’s important people know how to help their babies,” she said.

“The CPR kept his body pumping oxygen around him. I’ve got seven kids. Never in a million years did I dream I’d have to resuscitate any of them,” Robin shared. “When you’re discharged, no one teaches you anything unless you go out of your way to find it. I don’t know what would’ve happened without that training – my son wouldn’t be here today.”