Instant noodles may take just two minutes to cook, but they take less than a second to burn, as little CharlieSherborne discovered.
The inquisitive toddler from Whitby, near Wellington, tipped a bowl of the favourite snack over her arm and chest recently and is now recovering from second degree burns.
Her mum Georgie Slobbe (19) only turned her back for a moment when Charlie (17 months) managed to reach the noodles, which were cooling down on a kitchen bench and covered with a paper towel. Turning around to see Charlie on the ground, crying and soaked in the boiling water, Georgie flew into a panic. She immediately ripped off Charlie’s top and called for her mother, Rachel Petrie, who the pair live with.
Rachel herded her daughter and Charlie into a cold shower. Georgie remembers both she and Charlie sobbing as they stood beneath the water for 20 minutes to cool the burn.
“I was in hysterics,” she says I was beating myself up about it, saying it just shouldn’t have happened. I still don’t know how she managed to reach the noodles – I must not have pushed them back far enough on the bench.”
Meanwhile, Rachel had called for an ambulance and once she and Georgie got Charlie out of the cold water, theyhad to keep her warm. The ambulance crew was anxious that Charlie might go into shock and gave her a morphine injection to help calm her.
“She was such a trooper and as soon as the morphine hit, it was like nothing had happened,” Georgie recalls.Thankfully, doctors at Hutt Hospital decided Charlie didn’t require a skin graft for her burns, but she did need a painful operation to scrub off her burned skin.
“They gave her an anaesthetic and seeing her go onto the bed made me cry so hard – it looked like she was dead,”says Georgie.
“I feel so guilty. I know you can’t protect them from every accident, but I feel like it could have been prevented. If I hadn’t turned around in that split second, it might not have happened to her. When I look at her bandage, it makes me upset.”
Thankfully, little Charlie’s likely to make a full recovery with minimal scarring. However, Charlie and her mother still suffer emotional scarring – Charlie is refusing to go near the shower, while Georgie is frightened to cook and risk another accident.
“But I am so grateful that my mum got me to go in the shower for 20 minutes – otherwise Charlie’s burns would be worse.”
Georgie also believes all parents should do a first-aid course and not allow children in the kitchen while they are cooking.
“You also need to remain calm for your children if something does go wrong. That’s what I didn’t do – I let my emotions take over.”
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