Mom Warns Parents after 2-Year-Old-Son Nearly Dies Days after Choking on Popcorn

A concerned mother from Colorado shares that her young 2-year-old son almost died days after he had popcorn stuck in his lungs during a choking fit. She wrote a post to warn others about the dangers of popcorn to toddlers.

Little Nash Goddard from Denver, Colorado, had to have emergency surgery after getting pneumonia from dislodged pieces of corn after eating popcorn. Nicole, his mom, shared that the surgeons found that Nash aspirated popcorn into his lungs when he choked. Seeing it as such a grave threat, she decided to warn parents from all over the world about the dangers of young toddlers eating popcorn.

"I wanted to share our experience because as I’ve shared the story so many people were shocked and unaware of the bad effect popcorn can have on a toddler."

He was watching a movie with his mom and dad, Nicole and Jake when he choked on the snack. However, after a while, he was back to normal and continued to watch. It was only the next day when Nicole noticed he had such a strange cough before it developed into a fever.

On that night, she called the doctor and she was told to take him straight to the hospital for some tests. It turns out, he developed pneumonia as his body thought the popcorn pieces were "foreign objects." The body then created pus-filled pockets around them as a sort of defense mechanism, but with so many complications, he needed to undergo surgery.

At the time, they had him have an x-ray, and doctors immediately knew something was wrong. Nash was urgently put under anesthesia, and the doctors performed two separate surgeries were made to remove the popcorn.

Nash spent three days in the hospital last month before he was released and has since then recovered from the traumatic experience.

Nicole doesn't want any other family to undergo what they did, so she wrote a lengthy Facebook message about it, which has gone viral. In her post, she shared that like how parents would, they would occasionally feed their kids with junk like popcorn, as they didn't see anything wrong with it. However, such a terrible trip to the hospital and a near-death experience for their son has prompted them to write an eye-opener for other parents.

"I wanted to share our experience because as I’ve shared the story so many people were shocked and unaware of the bad effect popcorn can have on a toddler. Last Saturday night we were all watching a movie and eating popcorn which is a very frequent event on the weekend in our home. I didn’t think twice to give Nash popcorn."

In the end, the 39-year-old mom wrote about the ordeal in good faith, hoping to get the word out there that toddlers should not be eating popcorn.

"Please no negative judgment on this post, I wrote it as an eye opener for people to see how something that you think is fine can quickly turn into something bad! Always trust your gut because it’s right!!"