Lucy’s babies, Sammie and Sophie, were born in March 2023, at 33 weeks. Sammie was born without a heartbeat, but thankfully he was stabilised by an expert medical team and spent more than a week in neonatal intensive care. After 9 days, Sammie was discharged from hospital while his sister Sophie remained in hospital.

That night, 26 March, Lucy woke to find Sammie blue in his cot beside her. Her tiny baby was lifeless, hands freezing and his lips had a purple tinge. Despite the horror of the situation, Lucy says she knew she had to block out all her fears and help her baby boy.

After shouting for her husband Patrick to call for an ambulance, Lucy started CPR appropriate for a baby. She had learned how to perform CPR on a baby when she trained in paediatric first aid, during her career in the nursery sector.

Lucy performed CPR with just 2 fingers for several minutes, before and after paramedics arrived. Lucy’s actions saved Sammie’s life, highlighting the importance of learning CPR.

Free, fast CPR training for all

"Sammy's story shows that anyone can suffer a cardiac arrest at any time. Anyone can need CPR." - Lucy

CPR is an emergency lifesaving procedure, performed when the heart stops beating.

Each year, there are over 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK, with a survival rate of less than 1 in 10. Giving early CPR and using a defibrillator can more than double the chances of survival.

British Heart Foundation (BHF) has developed RevivR. RevivR is a fast, free, interactive, online CPR training tool. In just 15 minutes, you can learn how to save a life of an adult.  

We also created Classroom RevivR, a free, interactive teaching tool that makes it easy for teachers to teach students aged 11-16, CPR and defibrillation skills using a digital device and something to compress on. Classroom RevivR has been supported by Royal Mail in partnership with BHF.

But our work is far from done. We need your donations to help us provide free training, to fund lifesaving research, and keep hearts beating this Heart Month.

BHF has details on how to perform CPR on a baby or child on our website. You can also book in-person courses for baby and child CPR through both St. John’s Ambulance and British Red Cross.