SAVED BY BROTHER

Kim Winters told how her two-year-old son Aaron alerted her to a potentially fatal situation which had developed with his sleeping baby brother, Samuel.

She's labelled her son Aaron “a real hero” and believes his lifesaving actions deserve recognition.

Aaron shares a room with Samuel in the family's Castleview Park home in Moira. At 7am on Friday morning, Aaron, who has a very limited vocabulary, woke his mum with cries of "Mummy, mummy, baby, mummy''.

Kim said: "I was woke up immediately to these cries and dashed into the bedroom and found Aaron standing at the bottom of his cot stretched over towards the door calling in quite a distressed manner.

"At first I thought he had gotten his foot stuck between the cot bars as he usually does. However he continued to yell and screech ''Baby''.

"It was then I looked towards the cot where Samuel slept and saw him under the blankets head first. He had done a complete 360 degree turn and went under the covers head first. They were wrapped around his head and face so tightly that he couldn't even cry or thrash about and I thought the worst straight away."

"After removing the covers and checking he was okay I hugged my two-year-old so much I almost crushed him! He had just saved his brother's life by alerting me.

"This is a miracle - my two-year-old always sleeps until approximately 9am and Friday should have been no exception. In fact, he'd been sick on Thursday night and it had taken some time to get him asleep, so I thought he would have slept a wee bit more.

"Not only had he woken out of routine that morning, but he was alert enough to look at his baby brother and know something was wrong and that it was dangerous for him to have the covers over his head and that he needed to alert a grown up."

Kim's alarm wasn't set to go off until 20 minutes later at 7.30am in order to get her five-year-old daughter Faith ready for school.

She said: "If Aaron's actions hadn't happened and he hadn't woke me there is no doubt that I would have found my new baby dead in the next 20 minutes following my alarm clock.

"Aaron has no concept of what he has done and how amazing he is. He's a real hero."

Kim added: "I am a very vigilant mum of three and always follow guidelines and place babies heel to toe in their cots, but this little addition in our family has decided he wants to squiggle and did a 360 turn. I have even joked in the past about putting velcro on his pjs and mattress to hold him put."