NATASHA Jones will never forget the terrifying moment she discovered that her baby had stopped breathing.

Lacking any medical training, Natasha was forced to rely on her maternal instincts and managed to keep little Ava-Mai alive while she waited more than half an hour for the ambulance to arrive.

Ava-Mai was rushed to Southampton General Hospital, where doctors warned Natasha and her husband Karl that their child was unlikely to survive.

But she made a remarkable recovery after spending 48 hours in intensive care.

Now her parents are running resuscitation classes in a bid to fill a gap in the antenatal and postnatal care provided by the NHS. Families from across the south are gaining the lifesaving skills they will need if their babies either stop breathing or start choking.

Natasha, 34, of Brockenhurst, said: “Ava-Mai was 11 weeks old and was having a Saturday afternoon nap. I went to check on her and was horrified to discover that she was blue, with foam on her lips and all floppy like a rag doll.

“I told my son Jacob to get Karl, who was in the garden. When he came up I just looked at him and said: ‘Ambulance – now!’ “I carried out what I thought was CPR and had to wait 36 minutes for the paramedics to arrive, which was just horrific.

“I’m normally a together sort of person but Ava-Mai was drifting in and out of consciousness and at one stage vomited blood, which did make me panic.

My other kids were saying ‘She’s not dying is she mummy?’”

Ava-Mai was taken to hospital, where she had to be resuscitated twice.

Natasha added: “When she went into intensive care the doctors said they didn’t think she would make it through the first 24 hours. But Ava-Mai was having none of it. After 48 hours she pulled the tube out of her nose and started doing all the right things.”

Natasha said her daughter, now two-and-a-half, was found to have suffered what doctors described as “near-miss cot death”.

She and her husband are running resuscitation classes in a bid to prevent other families suffering the same ordeal.

Regular sessions are held at Careys Manor Hotel in Brockenhurst and a similar class is due to be staged at the Three Bears Cafe in Woolston, Southampton, on April 20.

The training is provided by Katie Baker, a resuscitation officer at Southampton General Hospital, and has already saved at least one life.

Natasha said: “A woman came to us when she was pregnant and subsequently had a baby son. He stopped breathing but she knew what to do because she’d been to one of our sessions. She said it was the best course she’d ever done.”

Natasha and her husband have also launched a petition urging the NHS to teach resuscitation in antenatal and postnatal classes.