A RELIEVED mum has told how her hero four-year-old daughter managed to pull her baby brother to safety after he became trapped underneath her collapsed body.
Little Ariah Calder saved baby brother Elijah - who is just 18-months-old - after he became trapped under their mum's body while she was having a diabetic hypo.
Mum, Heather Carson, has now spoken of her pride as primary one pupil Ariah knew exactly what to do when her blood sugar level drastically dropped below normal.
The 28-year-old from Troon, South Ayrshire, said: "I have been diabetic since I was 11-years-old.
"Normally when my blood sugar level gets low I ask Ariah to go and get my Lucozade for me - she knows where it is and calls it my medicine juice.
"But this all happened during the night so I couldn't tell her it was happening, she had to be able to recognise the signs herself."
Heather, a portrait artist, had gone to bed with baby Elijah and Ariah on the evening on August 15 while fiancé Craig, 31, slept in their bedroom downstairs.
She believes at some point during the night she began to have a diabetic hypo and fell out of bed, where she started rolling around the ground.
When Heather woke up the next day at 8am she had blood running down her face and her tounge was bleeding.
She said: "When I woke up I was on the bedroom floor and I saw Ariah sitting with Elijah on her knee in front of me.
"She said 'mummy your face is bleeding. We were crying and a bit scared but I told myself not to cry because I didn't want Elijah to be scared.'
"It must have been so scary for her to watch it.
"I have no idea how long it was going on, I was extremely disoriented when I woke up.
"I must have been rolling around on the carpet so I had carpet burn which was causing the bleeding and I was biting my tounge.
"I quickly went down the stairs and Craig was up, but he had no idea that any of this had even gone on because he slept downstairs in our bedroom.
"I passed Elijah to him and said I don't feel right and then I just collapsed."
Heather has no visual memory of what happened next but was rushed to hospital after worried restaurant manager Craig called her parents for help.
She said: "I only have audio memory of what happened next, no visual memory.
"I remember Craig trying to take check my blood sugar levels and I just kept repeating the same questions over and over again - I wasn't taking anything in.
"I was being violently sick every time I lifted my head, but my blood sugar levels weren't that low.
"Craig called my parents and we went to the hospital.
"Then next thing I knew I woke up later that afternoon and I felt absolutely fine.
"The doctors couldn't really figure out what it was because my blood sugar levels were fine, and it didn't add up to how I was feeling.
"When Ariah came to the hospital we asked her what had happened and it was only then we realised she had given me Lucozade during the night, I just couldn't remember.
"That explained why my blood sugar levels were normal again.
"I discharged myself from the hospital because Ariah was starting P1 and there was no way I was missing that."
Mum-of-two Heather says she thinks during the night Elijah and Ariah had started playing while she was having the hypo, rolling around the floor and biting her tounge.
She said: "At one point I rolled on top of Elijah and Ariah knew she had to pull him out from under me.
"She said she then went and got my medicine juice - which is what she calls Lucozade - but got it from upstairs because she knew not to open the baby gate at the stairs.
"She said she didn't want to open the gate at the top of the stairs in case Elijah rolled down.
"The stairs are really steep so thankfully she didn't open the gate, but how she had the initiative to do all of that is incredible.
"She fed me the Lucozade while I was rolling about the floor which must have been terrifying for her.
"I think she acted better than most adults in that situation.
"She is so mature and observant and we are extremely proud and impressed that she knew how to recognise I wasn't ok and what to do."
Heather hopes to raise awareness of how important teaching children how to handle these situations are.
She said: "I hope it will help parents to teach their kids how to handle situations like this.
"I know that you can never predict these things, but perhaps all the times we involved Ariah in helping with hypos and letting her see less severe ones, prepared her enough to use her own initiative when it really mattered."
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here