If you’re not in the habit of reading the labels on the products you use, then now is a good time to start.
You don’t want to experience what happened to this Canadian father: his daughter almost choked after he fed his baby food that was past its expiry date.
Sharing the harrowing episode on his Facebook page, Justin Morrice’s post begins:
“As I had just finished feeding my daughter I set some of these cheesies on her highchair tray as a dessert for finishing her snack….well in less then 10 seconds I had turned to rinse her bowl in the sink…turned back and saw her gasping for air.”
His daughter Annabelle was trying to cry, but no sound came from her.
Remembering what he had been taught to do during such situations, Justin picked his daughter up, turned her over and started slapping her back.
“For what seemed like forever I still could not hear anything,” he recalls. “I flipped her over and her lips had turned blue and she was still trying to cry.”
Justin tried again, but it did not help. When he turned Annabelle over, she was turning blue. At this point he honestly thought that his daughter was going to die in his arms.
“I panicked and did the only thing I could think of….I rammed my finger into her mouth and down her throat and was able to squish the cheesie enough that the next thing I heard was the sweetest sound in the world…her crying.”
Once again, he flipped her over and slapped at her back. This time, the offending food became dislodged and Justin was able to sweep it out of her mouth.
The incident left Justin confused, especially since Annabelle had been eating the same food for days with no problem.
Then he scanned the food container, and that’s when it all started to make sense:
“After scanning the can my mom found this ‘warning’ in tiny letters on their side to throw contents out after 5 days of breaking the seal.
“I opened a new container and I could not believe the difference.
“The ones in the can she choked on I can only describe to be like a foam ear plug. I could squish it but it would expand back out and would not break apart. The ones in the new can crumbled with ease.”
Justin is adamant that by posting his experience he is in no way degrading Gerber’s reputation nor its products’.
The only thing he wants out of the whole ordeal was for parents to become more vigilant when it comes to reading the labels on products, because “you can get ‘lazy’ as parents and it becomes routine.”