Grieving mother narrates how her nine month old baby chocked to death at a day care

England: When her nine-month-old daughter, Millie, couldn’t be saved by day care staff, Joanne Thompson started a first aid campaign to ensure such a tragedy is never repeated.

Like most women, Joanne Thompson battled with her emotions when it came to deciding whether to return to work after having a baby.

She desperately wanted to be a full-time mum to her only child, Millie, but the family finances meant they would struggle to make ends meet on her husband Dan’s salary alone.

So, when Millie was nine months old, Joanne, 29, reluctantly returned to her job as a quantity surveyor.

“I’d have given anything to be able to stay at home with Millie but it would have been too difficult for us to manage,” says Joanne.

"In the run-up to my going back, I used to wish that we’d win the Lottery so I could be with my little girl all day.”

Joanne knew it would be tough to leave Millie but what she could never have imagined after dropping her off for her third day at nursery in October 2012 was that she would never see her daughter alive again.

That afternoon Millie, described by her proud mum as “the happiest, sunniest baby in the world”, choked to death on some mashed potato as she sat in a high chair being fed lunch.

Losing a child is a horrific, life-shattering tragedy for any parent but for Joanne it was made all the worse by her firm belief that more could have been done to save her baby.

Two years on, Joanne and Dan have set up a charity called Millie’s Trust that is campaigning for a change in the law to ensure that every nursery nurse is trained in paediatric first aid.

Last week, her tireless work earned her the Inspirational Woman of the Year award from ITV’s Lorraine show, although Joanne is the first to admit that, as important as the campaign is, she’d give anything not to be heading it.

It was four years ago that Joanne and Dan, 41, a computer design technician, married following a whirlwind romance.

“We met at work and fell for each other instantly,” says Joanne. “He’s a good-looking guy. Clever, funny and kind and we got engaged after just five months of dating and married after nine months.

“We both love children and couldn’t wait to have our own. I got pregnant with Millie very quickly and when she came along in January 2012 we were beside ourselves with happiness. She was just a complete joy.

“She slept through the night from two weeks old, loved her food, loved her cuddles. Everyone used to say how lucky we were to have such a sweet-natured baby.”

As Joanne’s maternity leave came to an end, she and Dan discussed the best child care for their daughter. In the end, they settled on a combination of a family member and a nursery three days a week.

“Like most parents, we spent a long time looking into local nurseries. We read the Ofsted reports, visited them, chatted to staff and got feedback from other parents. The one we eventually chose had glowing reviews all round and seemed the best choice in our area,” Joanne says.

Those first couple of days were hard.

“I missed Millie terribly but she settled at nursery straight away, which made leaving her easier,” recalls Joanne.

It was on their daughter’s third day that Dan, working on a job in the North East, received a call from the Ramillies Hall School nursery in Cheadle, Stockport, to say that Millie was having breathing difficulties and had been taken to nearby Stepping Hill Hospital.

He called Joanne, who was in Manchester, and told her to leave work and go to their daughter.

“I remember driving to the hospital and thinking that perhaps it was a touch of asthma,” recalls Joanne.

“I am asthmatic and it seemed possible that Millie could have inherited it. I thought I’d arrive at the hospital and they’d have put her on a ventilator and she’d be recovering on a ward somewhere. I was worried but it never entered my head that she had lost her life.”

Still believing that her daughter was just unwell, Joanne was guided into the room where Millie’s lifeless body lay.

“It was chaos,” she says. “It’s unusual for babies that age to die and the hospital didn’t seem to know how to handle it. The first I knew that Millie had passed away was when I saw her body. To come across my daughter in this way was hugely traumatic and I needed months of therapy to just get me through the day.”

A post mortem revealed that Millie had died from complications when some food lodged in her throat. A coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure. He also accepted the nursery’s assertion that they did all they could to save Millie.

There were two paediatric first aid-trained nursery nurses on duty the day Millie died and one made attempts to revive her by slapping her back before CCTV showed her leaving the building to wait for the ambulance.

Millie was then looked after by another nursery nurse whose certificate was in First Aid At Work (not paediatric) first-aid training.

“From the moment Millie started choking, she was totally reliant on the nursery staff until the ambulance arrived,” says Joanne.

“The appropriate first aider should have dealt with the incident and not left Millie’s side. CCTV footage shows people running in and out of the nursery, including those trained in paediatric first aid, who we believe should have been assisting Millie.

"If they had given CPR as they have been trained to do, we do believe Millie would have had a better chance of survival,” says Joanne.